IF FRITZ HAD WON.

Auckland Star, Volume LVII, Issue 80, 6 April 1926, Page 7

IF FRITZ HAD WON.

EUROPE AS A VASSAL.

THE FATE OF AUSTRALIA

FAIR HOPES OF AUGUST

(By Cable.—Fress Association.—Copyright.)

LONDON, April 5

The death is announced of Herr August Thyssen, the German industrial multimillionaire. He was in his 86th year.

The passing of Ilei-r Thyssen recalls an amazing German plan for conquering Europe and England and for exploiting all "The wasted assets" of the British Empire.

This project of universal assimilation was devised at a meeting of magnates held in Berlin at the beginning of the century. It was originally planned for 1912, says the "Daily Telegraph," and was to have been based on almost incredible indemnities, which would have enabled German manufacturers to be exempt from taxation for years to come.

A syndicate with a capital of £20,000,----000 was to have handled Canada, and the inexhaustible wealth of India was to have been poured into Germany.

The reward for Herr Thyssen was to have been 30,000 acres of the best land in Australia.

"Unluckily for the plotters, as the world knows," continues the "Telegraph," "instead of having the expected profits the magnates of the Fatherland were called on in 1915 to pay £200,000,000 toward the expenses of the war, as against the profits which it had been expected to derive from indemnities.

"Herr Thyssen's share of this £200,000,000 was to have betn £200,000 as a first instalment, but he alone of all the magnates concerned refused to pay and denounced the levy as blackmail.

"Herr Thyssen was warned that if he broke the compact he would not receive any more war contracts, or money for the payment of bills already overdue, but the threats did not deter him. He said the majority might pay as • they liked and the world might scoff at the mortification of a greedy millionaire who had sold his self-respect for a bargain— a' parcel of land in the far Antipodes.

"In 1918 Herr Thyssen went to Switzerland and published a remarkable pamphlet in which he told the whole story. He accused the ex-Kaiser of having bamboozled his subjects into the war, which, he said, could mean nothing but national bankruptcy."—(A. and N.Z.)

Professor Ludwig Stein, in an article on August Thyssen, sen., says he was next to Hugo Stinnes, the greatest captain of industry, and the richest man in Germany. Even before the war, August Thyssen was the leading personality in the coal and iron trade. In the year 1912, August Thyssen wrote to Dr. Stein an open letter for the monthly "Nord und Sud," concerning the relationship of England to German industry, and at the end of a long statesmen occurred the following lines:— "I am persuaded that in the age of the internationalisation of political economy, of trade and commerce, international relations between the nations rest on an economic basis, and that the relations between England and Germany can be no exception to that rule. When the mutual economic interests of England and Germany are recognised, and are confirmed by actual proceedings, then talk about tension between England and Germany will speedily be erased from the orders of the day." The foundation of the Thyssen Works dates back to the year IS7I, when August Thyssen, then 29 years of age, formed the firm of Thyssen and Co., Ltd. About 70 workmen were at first employed rolling hooping iron and bar iron. August Thyssen was the member of the company financially responsible, his father, Friedrich Thyssen, being the other partner. Friedrich, the father, had decades before been director of a wire-rolling mills in Aachen (where the son had been born on May 17, 1842).

August Thyssen went into the coal industry at a time when, as it were, no one would touch coal with a 40-foot pole, and coal shares were as cheap as dirt. But just for that reason he could select just what he wanted. Thus it happened that his ironworks—as was only the case with very few smelting works of the west—lay right on the coal, and that" in- his concern that intimate local connection between coal and iron was founded that for successful working is so supremely important.

August Thyssen proceeded to erect in Lorrane the quite modern gigantic works of Hagendingen with .blast furnaces and raw steel works.

Modern and exemplary as the Hagendingen works were built, however, they revealed the weakness of the Thyssen combine, the only weakness in fact: the shortage of iron ore reserves. Thyssen, it is true, had built a huge new plant on the ore beds, but the ore deposits were too small for the demands of the extended works. Large ore deposits' were, however, no longer free in Germany, almost all fields having already been bought up.

The ore beds opened up by Thyssen in French-Lorraine and in Normandy offered no substitute in view of t/e political difficulties which aimed at giviiis France the opportunity to exploit.

When the war was lost, Thyssen.. with the loss of the Hagendingen works, wj« also rid of his worry about iron ore supply, or rather, his special ore-worry was merged in the general ore-worry of the whole German iron industry. The fate of alienation was shared by Thyssen with all the large iron works situated in Lorraine, but he refrained from using the compensation paid by the German Government for the purchase of those concerns 'which had remained German. \ytiereas durintr the war he had shown a great activity in dock building, and , had taken a very active part in the Briev question, he left the great concentration process of the post-war period almost unused.

On the whole, Ausrust Thyssen is the representative of the perfect workman type. He has, moreover, remained a worker in feeling. He despises every external ornament, »o Qrdfrs, no titles. His coat of arms is the upstretched hand grasping the smith's hammer. He was the only one in Germany who followed out the possibilities of concentration to the very end. and had stopped at the flight point of demarcation between German and American methods.

Before any other he recognised that German industry can never grow into the gigantic framework of the American tendency, and so his greatness consists not only in creation, but in reservation.