THE ACHIEVEMENT OF GREAT BRITAIN.

Otago Witness, Issue 3315, 26 September 1917, Page 25

THE ACHIEVEMENT OF GREAT BRITAIN.

(From an American Magazine.) All the seven wonders of the world fade on history's page, compared with the spectacle Great Britain presents to-day. A commercial nation of less than 50,000,000 people suddenly summoned to arms where no arms existed, and in less than thirty months she has a bigger army than history ever before recorded, and a war machine in Europo that for wealth of shell, explosives, and war power, is tho amazement of the Germans who had taken ten times thirty months to prepare for the attack. But this is the beginning of wonders. Without an English aeroplane that could circle her own island she has vanquished the boasted Zeppelin, and is mistress of her own skies. With submarines by the hundred threatening her coast defences, her food supplies and her commerce, she has swept all oceans, locked the vaunted German fleet in harbour, convoyed shipments of gold across the ocean in safety —loads of gold that in former times would have paralysed national financial markets —made tho English Channel her multiple-track-ocean-railway to Europo with no loss by Zeppolin or submarine; fought in Egypt at tho Suez Canal and at the Dardanelles; grappled with the Turk and the Bulgar; changed generals and admirals in command; changed Cabinets; fed the armies of France; given arms to Russia; maintained the armies and governments of Belgium and ■Serbia, and altogether advanced three* thousand million dollars, or three times tho national debt of the United States to her War Allies.

While the United States has been trying to find out how to build military rifles in quantities, and has unfilled orders for them representing hundreds of millions of dollars, England has been turning out rifles by the million for herself and her Allies, cannon by the thousand, boots and coats by the million for herself and Allies, and wonder of wonders, she has done all this, is doing it, is yet to do more, and has now her manufacturing, her trade relations and her overseas commerce unimpaired. Yet she has grabbed the trade of the world so that her enemies are struggling on half rations with food, rubber, and metal supplies from the outside world practically cut off except as new territory is taken. This is a gigantic physical power, and a trade and war power combined never before dreamed of. It puts in the shade all that the world previously knew of Great'Britain's financial power. Nobody dreamed two years ago that the war costs to-Great Britain wero to be beyond five or six billion dollars. It is to-day more than twice that sum, and 'Great Britain is prepared to double it again. But stupendous, and even beyond all previous estimates as is the financial power, the physical and mental power manifested by Great Britain, is the marvel of marvels. The British Lion was regarded as a money bag of trade and a whelp of the seas. Great Britain's ability to put 10 per cent, of her population under arms, to feed and equip her Allies, and at the same time to maintain her credit and commerce throughout the world, was something never dreamed of within or without the Empire before this war. . No economist ever counted the wealth in credit, gold reserves, and securities power that is now showing forth in the British Empire. No student of men and nations ever pictured forth the' war spirit of the British people that could be so roused in a righteous cause. No student of religion or social order ever gauged the spirit of self-sacrifice that is now lighting the path of the nation of war.

This is tho people's -war. It is the war of democracy that has built the British Empire around the globe. It is not a war of kings, lords, or nobles. It is a war in defence of all the civilisation, peace, and honour for which England ha 3 stood and in which she has made progress for more than a hundred years. The Prussians could measurably measure the wealth of England, count her population, and take toll of her guns, big and little. They numbered her military men, her business men, and her idle and leisured classes; and outside of her navy, her wealth, and her trade, she was by the Prussian military census, as nothing. But nowhere in the world was there anything by which to measure tho slumbering soul of that people. It is fighting mad to-day and getting madder every minute. The stigmas and insults to credit .and honour from Washington, only increased the resolve of her people, and their faith in the invincibility of their righteous cause. For this, they are willing to pledge everything- in sacrifice for justice upon the altar of their battle fires.

To what martyred souls runs back this heritage of noble spirit only the histoi-ian of the future may attempt to answer. The purpose of the present inquiry is to answer the problem of whence England gets her human power and her metal power. Twenty-five years ago the machinery of England and her metal workers stamped out the coins of many nations, and moulded the guns, big and little, of many more. She was tho ordnance maker of the world. Then Germany became her rival as a metal worker, and, getting Government bounties of orders, she was able with her cheaper labour and living to cut under the prices of freetrade England. The ordnance fires of England went out except for navy guns —and "Made in Germany" invaded the island and was stamped over the world, on everything, from cutlery to rifles and cannon.

But the foundations in metal_ workers and the old factories in this business had not entirely disappeared when the Prussian hosts fired upon Belgium and attempted to roll up the treaties of Europe as scraps of paper. It was on this almost forgotten foundation that England has brought forth her wealth of war material and is organising to roll the Prussian back over the Rhino in 1917.

England's reserve in man power that oan maintain her commercial production, her

exports, and overseas trade, while putting an army greater than that of Franco in the field, needs to bo carefully studied. Germany is living on 30 per cent, per capita of what it was consuming before the war, but England is consuming, feeding, and fighting to the extent that her physical foroe is increased by far more than 30 per cent. Tho whole nation is fighting, men, women, and children. There is nothing else thought of, talked of, or worked for throughout the whole country. All the leisured classes, men and women, are one way or another in tho war. Tho women are joining in the ranks of labour, and all labour to-day is for the country, with everything in production, trade, and commerce, locked in the war issue. It is not only a financial and metal, but a social, economio struggle in Europe, such as tho world has never dreamed of, and of which the of the United States almost havo no comprehension. Formerly, armies fought battles, and tho v*ar was wherever the armies moved. Today flvo hundred million people are arrayed in battle, and organising in clothing, food, and drink, and the discarding of luxuries, while increasing in the energies and hours of labour and in the mutual burdens of all iorms of taxation. Any exoess profit is promptly taxed. In England more titan two billions a year, or one-quarter of the cost, is being raised by taxation. Grains are being ground more coarsely, with the result that, in bulk, they produce 25 per cent, more, a smaller percentage of nutriment is lost, and the food, being richer in nutriment, consumption per capita ifi diminished without breadcards or any other German regulations. Tho v'hole world is coming into a new civilisation, a new manhood, and a new womanhood, and a new strength for both war and peace; and from Washington to San Francisco there appears to be little comprehension of tho issues and the economio results that must inevitably flow therefrom.