“Some financial profit arose from this interning of the little States, but it is probable that the desire for this was all along entirely secondary to the fear of Balkan, especially Servian, political and economic development.

“In the larger economic question Germany felt especial interest.

“In a comparatively few years she had made the greatest progress ever made by any nation in an equal time, with the possible exception of that made by the United States in a similar period after our civil war, and it is probable that not even our own advance has equaled hers in rapidity or extent, if all could be tabbed up.

“She had worked out a great manufacturing scheme, she had developed an immense internal commerce by means of her railroads and her Rhine and other waterways, she had built up an enormous trade with Eastern Europe, Western Asia, South America, and the United States.

“She had highly specialized in and become somewhat dependent on the production of articles like dyestuffs and the commodities of the pharmacopoeia.

“Her shipping had advanced until it closely crowded England’s; her finances, on the whole, were well handled and her credit was excellent, while her wonderful system of co-operation between the Government and manufacturing producers and commercial distributers of all kinds had become the admiration of all nations.  The extent to which her Government facilitated foreign trade through obtaining and distributing costly information might well be taken as the world’s model.

“Whatever claims be made or contested about her contributions to culture and theoretical science, there can be no argument about her material achievements.”

German Achievements.

“Along every line her social organization of co-operation between the Government and the people successfully handled problems feared by all the outside world.  While, as a result of the development of humane feeling, England and the United States have been saying that ignorance, vagabondage, and misery ought to be abolished, Germany has said, ’They shall be!’ And, saying it, she had actually commenced to abolish them.

“She had cut down enormous wastes of human energy and, for the first time in the history of the world, had established an economic minimum below which men and families were not permitted to sink.

“The cost of this was large; for insurance, colonies for tramps and vagabonds, employment agencies, and the like; but Germany made it pay in the creation of a nation built of loyal and efficient people.  Both their loyalty and their efficiency have been proved and reproved in the course of the present struggle.  They had accomplished marvels, they were ready for amazing sacrifices.

“Now, one of the principal reasons why Germany was able to do these things, although, she probably ignored it and possibly would deny it, is to be found in the free-trade policy of England.