THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 2, 1918. THE COMMERCIAL STRUGGLE.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXVIII, Issue 11752, 2 January 1918, Page 4

THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 2, 1918. THE COMMERCIAL STRUGGLE.

C-un pared with the commercial struggle mat will ensue ui tho tormination of thocwar, tl»! military cum- , paign, -wild all its horrors, will bo Out 11 circumstance. In discussing post-war problems, Professor Foxwoll, ; iu un illuminating address to tho , Boyal Institute in London, said:—! "Tho contrast between war and peace is* greatly exaggerated. What is vaguely.,called competition turns out on closer examillation to bo largely a struggle of force. True, the forces engaged are styled economic, not military; hut- the ends arc not very different, and the effect the same, hi both the weaker go to the wall; the wreckage is sometimes worse in the industrial conflict than iu war, as I 1 General Leonard Wood has shown in lib Princeton lectures. It depends on I the rules of each game. Before the Germans 'debased alt* the standards of military and naval warfare it had become in many respects more honorable, less brutal, than some forms of business conflict. It iniwt be the mission of tho Allies to niise tho standards both of peace and war." Indeed, as pointed out by tho Dunedin "Star," the world now knows that Germany's commercial aims precisely of tho same kind as her military aims. In the light of what has been disclosed during the past" three and a-half years, lew will quarrel with Ha user when he says: ".By menus of the concentration of all its energies tinder the State, by this unity of control, economic Germany has become a Power' nearly as-formidable as military ■Germany, and of the same species u Power if domination and of conquest." "With refreshing cnaidour he admits that "the Imperial German Government considered that it would be quicker and cheaper to attempt to gain' tlieir economic ends by vietoiy on the field of bailie." That chie'f anionsGerman publicists. Naumann, acknowledges in his recent worlc "JVlitlol Enropa" that "the war was only a continuation of our previous life with other tools, but based on the same methods." Now that the eyes of British people are opened fro the truth, thoy look back with wonder a.t the commercial conquests achieved, by Germany since the Franco-Prussian war, and they will bo disposed to agree with the dictum of the Frenchman, Bougarol, that "hud the Germans only known how 10 keep the peace they might easily, by their backstairs, underground methods, have eonquerod the world, the Mast, thrown in. Luckily for the world, they overrated their military Wwoj\" All this and hiPro. Professor Foxwell presses into the. foreground for the attention of British people. His main object is to put iu the pillory those predatory features of commercial competition which Prussian, influence lias so accentuated in the marketing of commodities. Th,professor pleads for the exorcism of the thieving spirit of trade. He protests' against the costly apparatus maintained in every country merely 1 for the purpose of drawing trade from one merchant to another. In view of tl|o sinister aim of Germany to put the, yoke of commercial militarism upon ."Europe there is much cogency in professor Foxwell's <totnu)ciiitimi k of, Britain's wasteful individualism in commerce. He cites tho., case .of a firm that spent as much as their net profits in advertising, designed simply to withdraw custom from a British competitor. The /unual expenditure by British business firms on advertising in Britain— in other words, in merely 'fighting..each other—is from QW,O0O,()OO to £100,000.000 -"enough (<> pay mor 0 than half the interest om the War Debt." The colossal waste of our Empire's internecine Commercial war must cease, he ,says, if the fierceness of Gorman competition is to be effectively combated. He urges the elimination of all the extravagances of unrelieved .individualism by various forms of co-operative effort. He wants tho Empire's industries to bo organised on national lines, not under Stat,, manngement, but under some form of co-opera Live management which will save British merchants from exhausting, their strength in struggling with each other. The Professor has certainly opened a rich vein of thought.