WATCH THE GERMANS!

Auckland Star, Volume LX, Issue 307, 28 December 1929, Page 11 (Supplement)

WATCH THE GERMANS!

.GERMANY LOST THE WAR [AIMS TO «WXNT THE PEACE.' AMERICAN OBSERVER'S WARNING ''Watch the Germans! That is thi Mammary of'my findings after having Hved in Germany and among the Ger mans for more than a year," declares Henry Albert Phillips, the noted Ameri' lean writer. "Do I think that they are to be jfeared? Yes, I do. If you mean thej are to be feared in their role as a competitor. There was never a more formidable' competitor than Germany to£ay. Name nearly any field—outside military and naval activity—that you like. "The things that I saw in Germany inore than two years ago, already conceived and being fabricated, are begintag to crash their way through the air land the waters and stun the commercial .world to-day—and to-morrow. The greater wonder is not the things of themselves, but the will and the power to attempt and°actually produce them in so brief a period after the Germans were uncompromisingly defeated and every promise of supremacy and vain ambition, together with their glittering empire, wiped off the face of the earth, leaving a huge debt facing the generations to come. "Practically everything went by the board—except the Germans themselves. Intrinsically the German is unchanged today from what he was in 1914. In that year Germany set out to win the war, .with what mighty effort and energy any pdult could tell you if he chose. "I heard the war talked of incessantly in every other country" except Germany. There I usually had to mention it first myself. "Oh, the war?" they would say, with a little sigh. "Yes, we lost the war, but we are going to win the peace!" And they believe it just as they once believed they wo«ld win that other struggle. The point is that they are too busy to think about the war. Work and Pull Together. "The German nation is a hardworking breed by training and disposition, inclination and ambition. But there is a factor that is more significant still— jfche Germans work together, pull together, more than the people of any other nation. They are one big family. All of the prosaic dullness and respectable happiness that mark the bourgeois fa,mily life are characteristic of the one big family. "Every German believes that Germany can win whatever she undertakes, some flay will win—it is their destiny! But they are content to work and wait, if need be, until to-morrow, or the day after to-morrow. They plant their forests, they plan their libraries, they construct their buildings for the good of the family, for their grandchildren's grandchildren. They do an honest hard day's work with painstaking skill—they owe it to the Vaterland, to the family. "Germany comes by her Great-I-Am-Bpirit naturally and honestly. It began

] as early as 800, when Charlemagne seized the supremacy in all the then European world by claiming the heritage of the ancient Romans and designating it the « Holy Roman Empire. This Holy Roman Empire embedded itself in the German psyche and has manifested itself many ' times in the form of a supremacy complex which the Germans have naively called Kultur. In every instance here- • tofore they have elected to build a war machine in which they have ridden to perdition, carrying their hopes, ambitions 3 and empire with them. > "Germany has much to thank the Allied ■ nations for. For the first time ra her i more-than-a-thousand-ycar existence they , disarmed her! As subjects of an eternally militaristic rule and rulers, they had not thought it possible to live and 1 carry on one's being without arms. Every youth had done time in the war machine. Then the empire crashed, and the Allies stripped them of the greatest millstone about their necks —as well as about those of all modern nations —huge armies and navies, their equipment and upkeep. i Fighting, for the New Conquest. "Germany saw her opportunity and seized it. The moment she was obliged to shelve her war business she turned all her formidable strength and energies into other channels. All during those five years that the rest of the world was bickering over the settlement of the ruins of war, and their labourers striking about a new adjustment of "vyages .and conditions, Germany was laboUrtng long hours, amid starvation, revolution, inflation and deflation. "True, Germany had to foot the bill— among others —for the Armies of Occupation. But even in this she was adding to the credit side of her new accounts. For, meanwhile, her own disbanded armies—now millions of workers—were industriously .designing and building both water and air ships, barracks and fortresses, motors and machines, for the new conquest of Peace! "Conquest without arms! Has Germany learned this most precious lesson of our industrial age, while every other nation of the first rank is staggering along, immeasurably handicapped in days of peace and plenty, with burdens and taxes about its neck for active armies and navies in a world protesting peace? What are the 1929 armament budgets of

her three leading rivals ? France £81,400,000! England £110,000,000! The United States £137,000,000! "Germany's reparations bill will about equal these sums annually; but something must be credited to her account for the millions of non-producing soldiers and sailors of her competitors who are being fed, clothed and salaried in the treadmills of the 'fighting machines.' "Being rid of these vast incumbrances is giving Germany to-day an economic advantage over her world competitors. It makes it possible to launch such splendid and titanic ocean carriers as the North German Lloyd's Bremen and Europa, which are re-establishing Germany's commercial sea power. Curiously the outstanding example of Germany's! industry and progress in the field of international competition in her peace bid for sppremacy is identical with her steel challenge for supremacy during the war. The Krupp works. The Krupp works were inextricably bound up in the World War, no less closely and vitally than Germany herself. Since the federation of the empire by Bismarck,

steel had come to dominate the lives and dazzle the vision of the ruling element of Germany. Steel guns and armament, eteel ships, steel principles and steel discipline—in the end a marvellous machine of steel! -

"Krupp's was the core of German ambitions and the carrier of German commerce; Krupps was the mainstay of German wealth and its invincible \> ~apon of protection. Crashing Steel Dreams of Militarism. "When the grand crash came in 1918 and Germany went down to defeat it carried its mighty steel engine and brilliant steel god with it. To all appearances it was the spectacular end of a brilliant play. "But now, more than ten years later, we must add a denouement, a fourth act, even though it may seem like an anticlimax, For at no period during its dramatic history is the career of the Krupp works more spectacular than it has been since the , capitulation of Germany. And so I shall proceed to answer the oft-asked question: 'What has become of the Krupp works, where they used to make Germany's mighty ordnance?' "According to the terms of the Versailles Treaty, all plants and machinery and tools that had been —or possibly might be in the future —used in the production of war materials must be destroyed. Thus in the Krupp works the Allied engineers found themselves face to fpe with a peace task that seemed as great, if not greater, than any. they had known in war. Five square miles of steel lay in front of them. Huge cannon and smaller guns, rifles and gun carriages, howitzers and mortars, grenades and shells, armour plate and equipment. Acres upon acres of it, munitions in mountains, countless in rumber, the hardest substance known to man— all had to bj destroyed, broken up, melted down.

"No less than 2000 mack. ,s, weighing 12,000 tons, forty furnaces and installations and 000,000 tools all fell prey to destruction. Besides, 7000 machines had to be dispersed, and removed elsewhere. The set-up value of this destroyed property amounted to consider, ably more than £20,000,000. For nearly four years the pile drivers used in cracking and breaking the larger forms and masses of steel could be heard crashing and crunching through the steel dreams of German militarism. "So that was the ignominious end of the matchless Krupp steel munitions works at Essen. "The shell of the huge Krupp remained —seemingly without a raison d'etre. ' "The plant did not remain empty and impotent for long. What followed is a remarkable example and testimony of 1 the ingenuity and energy of the German ] people in their determination and will, , not only to continue to exist, but to surpass. "Due to many causes—some in her favour, some diametrically opposed to her, but serving to spur her on—Germany got a flying start ahead of the 1 rest of the shattered European world in ( the mighty work of material rehabilita- 1 tion. Factories sprang up everywhere, { built with German foresightedness and thoroughness. European markets bought, j and bought at inflated figures, to learn j later that the greed and profits had j been realised at the expense of-their own j industries which the low-priced German j goods had almost put out of business. a

"So it was that Germany won the first skirmish of the great peace battle of competition.

"Before the war, Krupps Lad produced no finished articles except munitions. Various plants, however, had turned out parts of other machinery, or equipment, rough-faced or in cast especially for the rolling stock of railways. It was but a natural step forward, then, at this moment, to enter the field of manufacturing finished locomotives and freight cars. Accordingly, the largest of the former Hindenburg shops, covering eighteen acres of space, was equipped as a locomotive manufactory. As early as March, 1919—when the Allied engineers were in the very midst of their work of destruction— Krupps began to build their first huge freight locomotives. By-July, 1923, they were producing 300 heavy locomotives and 2500 15-ton freight cars of a Krupp patented design annually. , "But one of the great needs of Germany after the war was the repairing of every piece of broken-down railway ! rolling stock, for the better parts had had to be delivered to the Allies in the reparations programme. Several other large war shops were turned into railway repair shops. The former Turret Gun Shop was converted into a plant for the building of large-sized Diesel stationary engines. The Howitzer Shop became a factory for the manufacture of motor trucks and other motor vehicles. "In its immediate and careful survey of the urgent mechanical needs of Germany itself, which Krupps had made, it had been revealed that agricultural machinery had suffered badly. So several projectile shops, with a floorage of twenty-one acres, became the headquarters for the manufacture of agricultural machinery of every description. The first step was to acquire an old-estab-

lislied agricultural machinery firm bag and baggage. Its patents, designs and models were turned over to the laboratory and improved upon. The result was new-design mowing and reaping machines, special steel ploughshares, harrows and sowers, cultivators, hoeing and covering machinery, potato planters and diggers, and a score of others. Germany had hitherto been largely supplied by America with these devices. "Continued shortage of coal supplies led to increased working of brown coal and lignite deposits, and this circumstance was the Krupps' reason for seriously taking up the invention and production of mine excavators, which in turn led to the manufacture on a large scale of building excavators with extraordinary resistance against wear and tear. "There still remained acres od shops empty, and thousands of skilled and willing engineers idle. The search and research continued night and day for I additional products that would help put Germany to the fore and meet the : world market demands at the same time, i . This led gradually to a most diverse ' programme of production. [ Krupps As a Symbol. ' "Among the first of the numerous , machines projected was textile machinery, to be used in the many and varied processes for the separating and spinning | of cotton and wool. ( "To list all the Krupp products would ' fill a email book in itself. Krupps is ( but a symbol of what the whole of Ger- 1 many is doing. Krupps is simply the 1 monarch in the field of steel, raising a * mighty arm that needs watching, heavy and uncannily effective with the steel . weapons of peace. The challenge is not 1 only to the makers of many scores of * machines and mechanical devices, but;' -

to the gigantic producers of raw steel as well. Again, Krupps is in the world market ready to offer steel by the thousands of tons. "There remains another German challenge for supremacy in peace that has recently engaged the attention and admiration of the world. It is Germany's bid for maritime supremacy— at least certain commercial phases, oi it plying between Europe and America The announcement of the North German Lloyd Steamship Company a few' years ago that they intended to build two giant liners that would surpass anything on the sea was not taken altogether seriously. "Now not only one but two giant liners have been constructed as an indication of Germany's industrial psychology and energy. A series of misfortunes alone prevented the Lloyd company from doubling the phenomenal sensation created when the Bremen crossed the ocean more than seven hours faster than any other ship had ever made the trip. Her sister ship, ,the Europa, was scheduled to be launched several months before the Bremen, but first was held back by labour strikes and then partially destroyed by fire. New York will probably see her in less than a year. "This is the first instance wherein Germany's competition on its grand scale has been felt and appreciated by her competitors. The whole maritime world has been thrown into a mild state of panic. The White Star Line has suddenly decided to scrap its giant 1000foot Oceanic, already well under construction, and build a larger and faster ship. The Cunard Line has planned and placed the orders for two 70,000-ton liners. An Italian line promises immediate work on a ship to be more than 1000 feet in length. And the American owners of the Leviathan—still the largest ship on the seas—issue a counter challenge that they intend to build the largest ship afloat, regardless of all others.

What Of the Next Ten Years? ''It is worthy of note that all these ships are floated on paper, except Germany's Bremen and. Europa. Germany in this has stolen the march on them all. "But the launching, the sailing and the record-holding of the Bremen and the Europa are again but a manifestation of the more significant facts. Any country can build the 'biggest and fastest ship, 1 but how many countries would, like Germany, start with a couple of hundred thousand of obsolete shipping junk— which is what the Allies left to her in 1919—and in less than ten years' time, amid revolution and bankruptcy, add more than 4,000,000 tons? To-day Germany's tonnage is less than a million tons under the peak of 1914. "In looking.forward to what Germany is doing and will do on the sea, it is absolutely necessary to look backward in retrospect. If Germany was able to accomplish so much during the last ten years, five of which were almost fallow because of acute political and financial distress, what is she capable of doing during the next ten years? ° "The only adequate answer is that to-day, a mere five years after Germany's total bankruptcy, the republic is producing in all the most important brandies of industry as much as the Smpire did in its best years, despite the fact that her area has been diminished, while several of the chief competitors ire a little worse off that they were before the war. "Watch the Germans is not a bad dea, only 'competitors should keep at work while they do so."—("Star" and A.A.N.S., copyright.)