[13] Notably Lord Loreburn, in his Capture at Sea (Methuen).

TRADE IN ARMAMENTS

Certainly one crying evil exists which ought to be dealt with promptly and effectively in accordance with the dictates of common sense as well as common morality.  I refer to the trade in armaments carried on by private companies, whose only interest it is to foment, or perhaps actually to produce, war scares in order that munitions of war may be greedily purchased.  A notorious example is furnished by the great works at Essen owned by Krupp.  In the same position are the great French works at Creusot, owned by Schneider, and those of our own English firms, Armstrongs, Vickers, John Brown, and Cammell Laird.  These are all successful concerns, and the shareholders have reaped large profits.  I believe that at Creusot the dividends have reached twenty per cent., and Armstrongs yield rarely less than ten per cent.  It is necessary to speak very plainly about industries of this kind, because, however we like to phrase it, they represent the realisation of private profit through the instruments of death and slaughter.  It would be bad enough if they remained purely private companies, but they really represent the most solid public organisations in the world.  We know the intimate relations between Krupp and the German Government, and doubtless also between Messrs. Schneider and the French Government.  This sordid manufacture of the instruments of death constitutes a vast business, with all kinds of ramifications, and the main and deadly stigma on it is that it is bound to encourage and promote war.  Let me quote some energetic sentences from Mr. H.G.  Wells on this point:  “Kings and Kaisers must cease to be commercial travellers of monstrous armament concerns....  I do not need to argue, what is manifest, what every German knows, what every intelligent educated man in the world knows.  The Krupp concern and the tawdry Imperialism of Berlin are linked like thief and receiver; the hands of the German princes are dirty with the trade.  All over the world statecraft and royalty have been approached and touched and tainted by these vast firms, but it is in Berlin that the corruption is centred, it is from Berlin that the intolerable pressure to arm and still to arm has come."[14]

What is the obvious cure for this state of things?  It stares us in the face.  Governments alone should be allowed to manufacture weapons.  This ought not to be an industry left in private hands.  If a nation, through its accredited representatives, thinks it is necessary to arm itself, it must keep in its own hands this lethal industry.  Beyond the Government factories there clearly ought to be no making of weapons all over Europe and the world.

[14] There are one or two pamphlets on this subject which are worth consulting, especially The War Traders, by G.H.  Perris (National Peace Council, St. Stephen’s House, Westminster), and The War Trust Exposed, by J.F.  Walton Newbold (the National Leader Press, Manchester).  See also The War of Steel and Gold, by H.N.  Brailsford, Chapter II, “Real Politics,” p. 89.  The sentences quoted from Mr. Wells come from The War that will end War (F. and C. Palmer), p. 39.