and money open, as before the war, the German reciprocity scheme will
fail of its effect by the sheer force of natural competition. Hence
England can throttle the re-establishment of German credit by a free and
liberal trade policy, open to all the world. Though poor, after the war
she can actually be stronger, in view of her great army and navy, her
new individual efficiency, and renewed commercial vitality.

Will all this keep Germany out? There are many people, even in England,
who think not. Already Germans by the thousands are becoming naturalised
citizens of Holland, Spain, Switzerland and Denmark; building factories
there and shipping the product into the enemy strongholds, stamped with
neutral names. Much of the "Swiss" chocolate you buy in Paris was made
by Teutonic hands.

A French manufacturer who bought a grinding machine in Zurich the other
day thought it looked familiar; and when he compared it with a picture
in a German catalogue he found it was the identical article, made in
Germany, which had been offered to him by a Frankfort firm six months
before the war began. Only certificates of origin will bar out the
German product.

Amid the hatred that the war has engendered, England wonders at the
price she will pay for German exclusion. Men like Sir John Simon
solemnly assert in Parliament: "In proportion as we divert German trade
after the war we throw the trade of the Central European Powers more and
more into the hands of America, with the result that, unhappily, if we
became involved in another European war we should not be able to count
on the friendly neutrality which America has shown in this war." Others
inquire: "What of the future trade of India, the great part of whose
cotton crop before the war went to Central Europe?"