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BY H. N. BRAILSFORD

From The Daily Herald, June 21 (LONDON RADICAL LABOR DAILY)

Ir Europe were in a normal and stable condition, the meeting of M. Loucheur the other day with Dr. Rathenau would hardly have caused a ripple of excitement, even in the Parisian Press. M. Loucheur is the French Minister charged with the rebuilding of the devastated departments, and Dr. Rathenau is the German Minister who has to organize his country's contribution towards reconstruction. That these two should meet to discuss how far German labor may be used in France, and whether the standardized houses which the Germans propose to build are suited for the purpose, seems so natural that it is surprising only because, in our mad post-war world, every display of common sense is startling.

Some French journalists regret it, as they regret everything which may weaken the sacred vendetta. Others are surprised because no cry of alarm has come from London. Others, again, see in it the beginning of a much wider agreement between the organized capital of France and Germany. For this interpretation there is evidently some

warrant.

The two ministers are captains in their respective industrial worlds. M. Loucheur is an iron-master and contractor. Dr. Rathenau, eminent as a scientist and a writer of prophetic books upon social problems, is also the head of the 'A.E.G.,' the great German electrical combination, which had, by its pre-war alliance with the similar American Trust, achieved a virtual world

monopoly in the production of electrical machinery and material.

It is said on good authority that these two discussed the possibility of a friendly alliance between the French iron interest and the German coal interest. We are told also that Dr. Rathenau argued that, if German industry is to earn for France the immense tribute which she demands, it must be helped to find markets. That, again, is common sense, but it happens to be treason to the treaties. The Treaty of Versailles aimed at ending German industrial 'penetration' in less-developed countries, notably, Russia, Turkey, and China. It laid down that her big businesses, even in neutral countries, might be liquidated compulsorily for the reparations' account. An attempt was even made to root out the branches of the A.E.G. from South America. This was a British policy: our competing capital had marked down the A.E.G. as part of its war-booty.

These, then, were obviously delicate negotiations; for if M. Loucheur and Dr. Rathenau should agree that German export trade is to be fostered in markets and in articles in which British trade competes, it might be supposed that their conversations would annoy the ruling capitalist circles in London.

Thus we come distantly within sight of a development which hitherto has looked fantastic. In spite of the violence of French industrialist militarism, in spite of the sentimental dislike of Germans for France, and their compar

ative lack of hostility to ourselves, there exists in Germany a small but clever and persevering school of thought, which maintained from the day of the surrender onward that England, not France, was the enemy. Both, it argued, were ruined by the war; the lame man must help the paralytic. Our overseas expansion was the real threat of strangulation to the Continent. As France rained blow on blow upon her prostrate enemy, and we inclined with a Homeric gesture to bestride the fallen body, this school with its anti-British 'Continental' policy was laughed at by 99 Germans in 100. To-day it looks less wildly mistaken in its reading of tendencies.

The history of modern economic Imperialism is bound up with the politics of iron and steel. Cotton, the typical industry of the early age of Capitalism, never tended to Imperialism. Cobden and Bright were its prophets. It exported goods for consumption, and dealt with private traders and customers on a cash basis. It could sell without annexing. Then came railway-building. The contractor went to work, first at home, then in Europe, next in the United States, and finally in the Colonies, and in Lord Salisbury's 'Dying Empires.' He exported capital. His operations were aided, and often led, by banks. He dealt with foreign governments on a concession basis, and required the aid of his own government and its armaments to extort or protect his concessions. His interests were anchored in a particular territory, and were in the nature of things, a monopoly.

During the war the central purpose of German 'heavy industry' seemed to be to facilitate the workings of its trusts, by consolidating Central Europe as an economic unit, with a simple system of tariffs and commercial legislation. This great home sphere was to be rounded off by the annexation of the French iron-ore field of Briey, and the Polish coal-field,

and also, perhaps, by the inclusion of Belgium in the economic unit. Thus, nearly the whole iron- and coal-resources of the Continent would have come absolutely within the power of the German cartels. Capital was using war to complete its own concentration and to achieve its ideal of monopoly.

Since the Allied victory the same policy has been followed, though less systematically, by French capital, with iron leading. It recovered the German Lorraine ore-field. It took the Saar coalfield. It used the Poles the other day to rush the Silesian coal-field. It came within a hairbreadth of occupying the Ruhr coal-field. It has broken up the German 'Central Europe' by using the principle of nationality to achieve Balkanization. It nearly managed to get all the coal of Europe under its control.

'Nearly,' however, is useless. British opposition intervened. Paris at last understood that France could not seize the Ruhr without smashing the Entente. Her designs on Upper Silesia are almost equally risky. But these are the two 'key' positions. France has the ore, but her now vastly expanded steel industry cannot achieve more than a national concentration without the use of German coal. The German cartels on their side are in no less urgent need of French ore. If force has failed, another possibility opens out—a close agreement, leading, perhaps, eventually to the creation of Franco-German cartels.

There is nothing new in this idea. A marriage of this kind nearly came about during the long Moroccan crisis. Schneider and Krupp at one time made an agreement to work up the ore of Algerian Ouenza into French and German cannon. M. Caillaux always stood for this tendency, and would have allied French finance-capital with German industry. It is possible that MM. Briand and Loucheur are furtively reviving his

policy, though they will have much ado to manage their sentimental chauvinists. They may be delaying the solution in Silesia in order to use the threat of the loss of its mines to bring German capital to terms. One can only guess one's way through these designs, and probably at the first attempt so large and risky a scheme will fail.

It is interesting, however, even as a project and a possibility. Capital has always a choice of methods in achieving its own world-wide concentration. It may fight or it may negotiate. Herr Erzberger, in 1917, proposed an amicable Anglo-German combination, based on a deal by which our shipping interest should take up a third of the shares in German shipping, and it a third of ours. We preferred, in 1918, to appropriate the German merchant marine.

Since the peace, however, Allied capital has been 'penetrating' German industry extensively. That process may now have gone so far that our ruling class no longer desires, as it did when the treaty was drafted, to destroy the

foreign trade of Germany. Indeed, it sees the uses of an active and capable German industry for the lowering of wages at home. The further this mutual penetration proceeds the nearer shall we come to a conscious international class struggle.

The present phase is one of hesitation and ambiguity. It was London which began the policy of friendly cooperation with Germany. But it has been fitful, inconsistent, and impulsive, as Mr. George's way is. It seems ready to abandon the Continent if it can get its way in Turkey. And now France makes a first essay in the same policy. But she, too, will be fitful and inconsistent. She cannot drop the Poles. She will not give up Turkey to us. The logic of the 'Continental' policy is still too clean-cut for the confused politics of to-day. But it behooves us to move warily. On the day that the Eastern ambitions of Lord Curzon and Mr. Churchill tempt us to abandon Europe to France, the Continental combination will be formed against us.

AN AERIAL LINER

BY J. B.

[During the races at Ascot, the British dirigible R 36 was used to assist in the control of the heavy traffic in the roads leading to the race-tracks. From their vantage-point aloft, the crew of the vessel were able to foresee congestion, and convey the necessary information by wireless to the police on the ground.]

your

From The Manchester Guardian, June 17
(RADICAL LIBERAL DAILY)

To go on board air-liner is still a sort of adventure. You wedge yourself through an angle of the steel lattice of which the mooring mast is constructed, and climb a vertical iron ladder for about 120 feet; then pass by a duck

board gangway into the trap-opening of the ship. The interior of the monster through which you walk is as strange as the interior of the whale must at first have been to Jonah. The narrow, wooden catwalk that runs through the

ship is supported by thread-like wire braces every yard; and on each side is a network of metal girders like a giant 'Meccano' set.

After a long way you reach a hatchway that takes you down to the passenger cabin, which is like a great Pullman car of 131 feet, accommodating 50 passengers. A passageway runs down the centre, and the sides can be screened into separate cabins. Tables and beds can be unhinged and set in position when wanted. You look out almost beneath you. There is a cooking galley, pantry, baggage-room, and lavatories. The forward part of the car is the control cabin, with all the equipment for navigating and manoeuvring the ship; and the wireless also is there. There are five power-cars, which develop 1570 horse-power, driving the liner at a cruising speed of about 50 miles an hour, with a high speed of 70.

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The vast size of R 36 - 672 feet can best be realized by the fact that, if she were stood on end, she would be almost as high again as St. Paul's Cathedral. The crew consists of four officers and 24 men, and they keep watches after the ancient custom of the sea. Airtime, too, is by bells, although they are not struck; and an airship is ‘she.'

R 36 left her mooring mast at Pulham (Norfolk) about half-past seven in the morning, and was over London at a quarter to nine. She did not take quite the Zeppelin route, which passed near Ipswich, but joined that dolorous way on the south, and followed it over Enfield and Epping Forest. The motion of the ship is very curious. A sense of buoyancy possesses you. But it is the earth that is moving, like a magic carpet of all colors; and you who are sitting still, having it unrolled before you by some celestial salesman.

What a patchwork is the English countryside! It seems incredible that anyone should trouble to cut it into

such snippets and color them with such variety every shade of red, from blood-hued poppyfields to pale brown ploughed earth; and every shade of green, from a harsh blue-green to a green that was almost orange. The roads curl and twist as if they had been made in imitation of the streams. It is only canals that show straight lines. The Norfolk and Cambridge villages and farmhouses, with their narrow red roofs and smattering of outhouses and ponds, like bits of broken mirror; the old russet-toned manor-houses set cozily in a nest of trees, with parks and little gray churches close by and rhododendrons coloring the shrubberies; windmills which, when going, are the only moving thing in the landscapes; sheep clustering together; ornamental waters, with white particles on them that must be swans these were the points in the panorama for the first fifty miles. What was that white smoke down there where was the train? Oh! so it was clouds, of course. It takes a little till one gets one's air eyes.

The strange thing is the unoccupied look of the country. The roads are empty; there is no one working in the fields. Nothing is moving. No birds are flying below us. One expected to see larks surely they know that we belonged to their crowd now? The first town we passed closely was Saffron Walden, after a glimpse of Cambridge halls and towers in the distance. The neatness of the pinched rows of houses, each with its apron of garden, and the delicately articulated church, its slender spire, and the trees running into it all round, gave it a good appearance. But it is the great houses like Audley End that come off best in an aerial scrutiny. They look like the models you see in the old portraits, in the hands of the founders of ancient churches and colleges.

At last London, with its suburbs

stretching out like coils and rows of tubes and a film of smoke dulling the view. However did the Germans manage to miss with so many of their shots! The air-liner swings to the west. Hammersmith Bridge is plain, and the streets are busy with traffic, some of it for Ascot. There are few signs of it on the way up the river. R 36 will have an easy day.

Our beat seemed to be between Kew Bridge and Ascot, but not within three miles of the race-course, for even the gentle purring of R 36, it was thought, might disturb the race-horses, or, at any rate, the bookmakers. Most of the time she is a Royal policewoman on the Windsor beat. Windsor, with the Royal Standard over the Round-Tower, looks like a tin castle, for its leaden roofs glimmer in the sun. Round it are tattooed parterres of flowers, and the broad walk has a trimming of parsley. The RoundTower, even from a height, looks as strong and self-contained as a seashell. An inch or two away is the little whitedomed mausoleum of Frogmore, and another inch off is Virginia Water in its forest of trees and rhododendrons. Very little traffic here, and the wireless finger was not upraised to stop the motors. At Staines there are groups of crawling motor-cars and some coming from Guildford.

As for Ascot, we could see the white stands but what horse won the Coventry Stakes or the Gold Vase, or whether the ladies were really wearing organdie, whether gehenna hair has gone out and betel-red teeth have come in, the strongest air-glasses on the ship could not tell.

Then back to London, and the R 36 circled over Croydon and dropped a parachute containing the first part of this account of the airship's trip. The parachute was launched from an opening on the bow, and we watched its white umbrella descending softly, miss

ing the aerodrome, until, after touching a tree it fell in a field against a wall. The drop was 2000 feet. A tiny figure could be discerned scrambling across the field for it. All was well.

The light was better as we hit the Thames over the docks, and the historic London disclosed itself beneath us. The streets seemed half-empty, the traffic all crawling, and the barges on the river all deserted. What a jam of streets, all the same - however do these insect people find out their houses at night? The biggest figure we saw was the big bear on the Mappin Terrace at the Zoo. R 36 roared over the animals. One wondered if the elephants and camels looked up and got a free sight of R 36? What was the luck at Lord's' The field was empty. The worst was feared.

Back again to Ascot, and this time we went over the race-course; but the races were almost finished and the black roads were well sprinkled with little shapes overtaking and passing one another. The stands were deserted, but there was still a pack of cars and crowds of booths and tents, and pinheads that may have been people possibly even winners. Even from the top Ascot looked pretty, with its ringlets of trees behind the grand stand and its green, lawnlike expanses. A tiny spot of moving color was discerned as a jockey on a horse walking on the course. So the R 36 saw something of the Ascot races. All the time she had been serving the affair. Here are two sample messages:

'R36 to Staines: Omnibuses and heavies are not being diverted at Egham from Basingstoke Road, as arranged, toward Windsor. Please communicate and report reason.'

'Staines to R 36: Egham police on way to rectify this at once.' Now for Croydon and the second parachute.

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