GERMANY CAN'T AFFORD WAR

Auckland Star, Volume XLIII, Issue 215, 7 September 1912, Page 18

GERMANY CAN'T AFFORD WAR

AMERICAN BANKER'S VIEWS. .Ail international banker, who recently returned from Europe to New York, pays: -The financial, industrial and political situation in Germany interested mc More than anything else in Europe. 1 satisfied myself that war is the last thing Germany wants or can afford. " A year ago English financial and Government interests believed they were within -4 hours of war. The only practical result, however, so far as Germany is concerned, was that we had to send 4:30,000,000 from America to help her out of the consequences of her own war scare. Of course, France began to pull home her money when Germany barked at France from the harbour of Agadir, and the English lion roared back with a noise thai Pent chills down the marrows of European financiers. '• France is financially vp.ry strong, and I am not sure that .a Europenn war might not find her stronger in men and amis than she \va« in IH7O.

'• L want Americans lo realise thsvi the day has gone by in Germany when the Emperor or hi*' Cabinet, or anybody except itbe people of (lermany, can make wnr. When the German peoplo feel tlmt their national existence or honour is at stake they -will <*t> to war. but never before.

'• We think we know something of the problem, -with the high cost of living In America, but we are not in it with Germany. Rents are not high, but the cost of food is higher than it is in New York. AH the Americans 1 met told mc it coat them more to live in Berlin than America. I paid more for my hotel rooms in Berlin than I would pay in New York for similar accommodation. Germany is I industrious, and building tremendously •with borrowed money, but I do not think that she is acomnulating very much after afao has paid the interest aud settled her ■own food bill.