The revival of Germany, limited by these enormous reparations, will undoubtedly increase the general prosperity of all European nations. The restoration of German purchasing power by a loan of £40,000,000 from Great Britain and the United States, stabilising her monetary system, will help world trade everywhere to the extent that Germany buys raw material for her industries and additional luxuries and comforts in foreign countries. Australia and Canada will benefit by purchases of wool and meat. They will buy more from the Mother Country in consequence. Holland, Denmark, Sweden, Italy and France will exchange more products. The wheel of world trade will turn more rapidly. Great Britain and the United States will find Germany a better customer. But Great Britain will also find Germany a stronger competitor, and the advantages which may come to the British people by the recovery of prosperity in Europe may be outweighed by that competition owing to the difference between dear labour and cheap labour. Already, ten years after the beginning of the war, Germany is able to offer steel to Middlesbrough at thirty shillings a ton less than it costs to manufacture steel in Middlesbrough itself! I have the greatest sympathy with organised labour in England which is endeavouring to maintain its standard of life and wages and even to improve them. But the Socialists who are legislating for shorter hours, more pay, larger doles for unemployed, national subsidies in the building trade, and national money for providing work, are up against the industry of German labour which is working nine and ten hours a day, instead of the eight hours in England, at less than half the rate of pay. In great industrial cities like Sheffield something like a third of the working population is living on charity or the official dole. It is impossible for a nation to maintain its economic life on such a tragic basis. It must be put upon sounder foundations or come down with a crash. ILLUSIONS OF THE SOCIALISTS The peril in England at the present time is the illusion of political leaders in the Socialist Party that the prosperity of the working classes may be increased without any regard to the economic conditions in other countries. The painful truth is that these conditions of cheap labour and long hours, better organisation and greater mechanical skill, will come smashing into the dreams of the social idealists with heavy blows of abominable reality.