The Audacious WarBarron, Clarence W. (Clarence Walker)
History
The Audacious War
Barron, Clarence W. (Clarence Walker)
World War, 1914-1918
Germany has been at war--commercial war--with the whole world now for a
generation, and in this warfare she has triumphed. Her enterprise, her
industry, and her merchants have spread themselves over the surface of
the earth to a degree little realized until her diplomacy again slipped
and the present war followed--such a war as was planned for by nobody
and not expected even by herself. She was giving long credits and
dominating the trade of South America. She had given free trade
England a fright by the stamp, "Made in Germany." She was pushing
forward through Poland into Russia to the extent that her merchants
dominated Warsaw and were spreading out even over the Siberian
railroad. Her finance was intertwined with that of London and Paris.
In the United States she was the greatest loser. Here taxes were
lowest and freedom greatest. German blood flowed in the veins of
20,000,000 Americans and not one fourth of them could she call her own.
The biggest newspaper publisher in America, William Randolph Hearst,
figured that New York was one of the big German cities of the world.
He turned his giant presses to capture the German sentiment. He spent
tens of thousands of dollars upon German cable news, devoting at times
a whole page to cable presentations from Europe which he thought would
interest Germans. But the investment proved fruitless; he found there
was in America no German sentiment such as he had reckoned upon. He
could not increase his circulation, for the German-Americans seemed
little concerned as to what happened in Berlin or Bavaria.
Prussia learned what Hearst learned, that Germans were soon lost in the
United States. She studied this exodus and the wage question and by
various arts and organizations arrested the German emigration to
America. She saw to it that employment at home was more stable. It
was figured that if the German emigration could be centralized under
the German eagle it would be to her advantage. The question was where
to get land that could be made German. Europe has for some years
expected a German dash in Patagonia, and the Europeans outside of
Germany have taken very kindly of late years to the Monroe Doctrine.
In Africa and the islands of the sea the German colonial policy has not
been a success. Dr. Dernburg as colonial secretary has many a time
stood up in the Reichstag and warned the Germans that the home military
system and rules were not adaptable to colonization in foreign parts;
that Germans must adapt themselves to foreign countries and not attempt
at first to make their manners the standard in the colonies they
undertook to dominate.
While German colonies have not yet passed beyond the experimental
stage, German tariffs and German commerce have been great successes.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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