"Great nations do not imitate." We may learn much in detail from the Germans; but Englishmen could not adopt the German system unless by first turning themselves into Prussians. Our people would never submit to Prussian methods of state control. Moreover all British experience shows that in this country such control would be disastrous. Yet competent authorities agree that immediate organisation is a necessity. It cannot be beyond the wit of Englishmen to devise means whereby British individual enterprise, common sense and self-reliance may work through methods of systematic organisation, combination, united action. From the friends of Britain everywhere comes the same warning. It is most appropriate to conclude with one uttered by a South American of unimpeachable authority, Don Pedro Cosio, former Uruguayan Finance Minister, who recently represented the Republic of Uruguay in this country. In a report to his government on the organisation of labour in the United Kingdom he writes, "The nation which is the first to organise its industry for the commercial campaign will be the one which will occupy the forefront in foreign markets." CHAPTER III THE ECONOMIC WAR AND ITS PROPAGANDA "Economic War":--This reiterated German phrase is not mere metaphor. The Germans pursued in peace the operations of war. To them commerce meant not merely the pursuit of trade in peaceful rivalry with others, but a sustained effort to defeat and oust rivals and reduce to economic subjugation the lands penetrated. By plunging into open war, which was meant to continue and to confirm that process, the Germans have risked their previous gains. Their own weapons are turned against them. The economic character of the actual war and the efficacy of the economic weapon in the hands of the Allies become more and more evident. In the early months of the war this weapon was not wielded with thorough decision, and Germans beyond the Atlantic were able to carry on considerable European trade. But today the German merchant is striving to defend, against an overwhelming weight of maritime pressure, the ground which he had won through a generation of laborious and patient effort.