"YOU ENGLISH."

Marlborough Express, Volume XLIII, Issue 140, 11 June 1909, Page 3

"YOU ENGLISH."

ANOTHER INTERVIEW WITH THE KAISER. An interview is reported to have taken place between the Kaiser and a representative of Shipping Truth. The Kaiser is reported to have said: You English make the one big mistake of always imagining my people are seeking to spoil your trade supremacy on the seas. All my people want is a share of it —of course, as large a one as possible. That I and my people are sincerely desirous of having nothing but the amicable relationship with the English peoples may not be believed in your country, but we are used to being misunderstood. It is strange, and a source of great regret to me, that notwithstanding all my protestations and the official statements of my Ministers, it should still be possible that your people should cherish so deeply hostile an attitude to my people in their trade relations. Why should your people imagine that, by some Divine Right, the oversea carrying trade of the world has been specially entrusted to them, to the exclusion of all other nations in general and the Fatherland in particular? Am I not to be excused for thinking that your shipowners' hatred of our great mercantile marine is solely based on their fear of losing still more of the world's carrying, owing to my people's better knowledge of how to conduct it, their better equipped ships, and their contentedness to supply every transit facility at a minimum cost? You ask me to what I attribute the universal hostility of your shipowners to my people's competition. All competition is.disliked by those who have to meet it; but your shipowners are angry because the days of ten, twenty and thirty years ago are gone from them for ever. Then they made great profits—extortionate profits. Why, you English people ought to thank my people for the very competition of which you complain. It has reduced transit costs to you and all other nations as they would never otherwise have been reduced. , But you English, you are selfish and suspicious, and you make the mistake of not so encouraging your shipping men, by State assistance and by honoring your patriotic ones, so that there shall be some other aim for them than mere money gain. You see, lam generous, for in telling you this, I tell you the secret of the development of my people's mercantile power on the seas.