Wherever you go in France, you find some concrete and striking evidence of the Anti-German wave. When you get a bundle from a Paris shop, you are likely to find stuck on it a brilliantly coloured stamp showing a pair of b.l.o.o.d.y hands holding a number of packages, the largest one labeled "made in Germany." Under it is the sentence in French reading: "Frenchmen, do not buy German products. The hands that made are reddened with the blood of our soldiers."
There is great variety in these stamps, which are used on letters and packages. One of the most popular shows a helmeted German with a brutal face holding a smiling mask before his visage. In one hand he holds a bundle marked "Made in Germany." On this stamp is the inscription: "Mistrust their smiles--in every German there is a spy."
Still another and equally popular stamp pictures a soldier with bandaged head standing by a prostrate comrade and pointing to a fleeing German.
The inscription reads: "We chase the Germans during the war. You, civilians, will you allow them to return after peace?"
One stamp used much throughout the Provincial French cities shows a woman in deep mourning weeping over a grave marked with a cross surmounted by a red soldier cap. The woman is supposed to be saying these words: "French people, buy no more German products. Remember this grave."
A companion stamp shows a figure representing the French Republic and holding the tri-colour. The flag is attached to a spear with which she is piercing the breast of a German eagle on the ground. At her side is the national bird of France, the c.o.c.k, crowing triumphantly. Underneath are the words: "Refuse all German products."
Similar in idea is another dramatic conception showing a white robed female figure holding a battle axe in one hand and pointing with the other to a burning cathedral. Her words are: "Frenchmen, do not consume any German products. Remember 1914."
Most of the large French cities have their own Anti-German stamps which are enlarged and used on billboards as posters. A typical city stamp is that of Lyon, which shows a c.o.c.k in brilliant colours standing proudly in the red and blue rays of a white sun. Attached is the legend: "National League of Defence of French Interests--The Anti-German League: Buy French Products."
The City of Ma.r.s.eilles has a stamp showing the French c.o.c.k standing on a German helmet surrounded by the words "Anti-German League." Elsewhere on the stamp is the inscription: "No more of the people--No more German products."
Whether the Frenchman buys or sells, he has poked under his nose or flaunted before his eyes every hour of the business day some concrete evidence that his country has put the German people and their products under the ban.
In connection with this campaign are some facts of utmost significance to the American business man who has studied the intent and purpose of the Paris Economic Pact which is described in a previous chapter, and which declared for an Allied war of economic reprisal against Germany and the other Central Powers. In that chapter, as you may recall, the point was made that since individuals and not nations do business, the Pact was likely to fail.
With their usual intelligence, the French understand this, and their whole educational campaign at home is to make the individual Frenchman immune against the lure of the cheap German products. The French know that it is the sum of individual French resistance to German buying that will keep the German product forever outside the realm of the Republic.
Indeed, the clearest-minded men in France to-day believe that more commercial advantage will accrue to France by the intensive development of her resources, the perfection of old industries and the creation of new ones than in the formation of committees devoted to plans for commercial alliances dedicated to reprisal. In other words, this helps to bear out the theory held in many quarters that the economic pact is after all merely a campaign doc.u.ment and utterly impracticable.
In France there are other signs that point to a rift in the Pact. While I was in Paris, a well known Senator pointed out that as soon as the war ended France would need coal and would look to Italy for it as she had done in the past. To obtain her coal more cheaply than she is now doing from the United States or England, Italy would very likely make concessions to Germany in order to obtain German fuel. The result would be an interchange of merchandise between the two countries regardless of the decree of the Paris Pact. The question arises: Could France place restrictions upon the Italian frontier to the annoyance of her Allies?
Meanwhile France is seeking immunity from any future coal crisis by developing a system of hydraulic power which will not only be economical, but will also help to cut down her imports. It is just one more phase of the ever-widening programme of Self-Sufficiency.
Despite our past blunders, our present lack of organised initiative, and the efforts toward Self-Supply, the future holds a large business opportunity for America in France. As a matter of fact, half of the selling work is already registered because the French are eager and anxious to do business with their great sister democracy across the sea. It is, therefore, up to the American exporter to capitalise the needs of the nation and the good will that it bears toward us. But it must be done now.
For one thing, it cannot be achieved without constructive co-operative work. Groups of exporters must organise and establish offices in Paris and elsewhere in France. The reason for this is that the Frenchman abhors the fly-by-night salesman: he likes to feel that the man with whom he is trading has taken some sort of root in his midst.
With organisation must come knowledge. Why did the Germans succeed so amazingly in France? Geographical proximity and the Frankfort Treaty helped some, but the princ.i.p.al selling power he wielded was that he lived with his clients, found out what they wanted, and gave it to them.
If a French farmer, for example, wanted a purple plough share fastened to a yellow body, the German a.s.sumed that he knew what he wanted and made it for him. The average American exporter, on the other hand, has always a.s.sumed that the foreign customer had to take what was given to him. For this reason we have failed in South America and for this reason we will fail in France unless we change our methods. Knowledge is selling power.
We must be prepared to give the French long credits, and if necessary, finance French enterprises. Despite her immense gold h.o.a.rdings, she may feel an economic pinch after the war. We must also have sound and organised French credit information.
Our salesmen must know the French language and sympathise with the French temperament. Give the French buyer a ghost of a chance and he will meet you more than half way. Unlike the stolid Englishman he is plastic, adaptable and imaginative. Understanding is a large part of the trade battle.
We must acc.u.mulate large stocks of American goods in France to indulge the purchaser in his favourite occupation of long and elaborate choosing and to meet demands for renewal. To ship these goods we must have our own bottoms. Here, as elsewhere in the whole export outlook, is the old need of a merchant marine.
But we will never realise our trade destiny in France without reciprocity. We cannot sell without buying. France looks to us to take part of the huge flood of goods that once went to Germany. We take some of her wine: we must take more. We buy her silks and frocks: the American market for them must now be widened. We depended upon Germany for many of our toys: France expects the Anglo-Saxon nursery henceforth to rattle with the mechanical devices which will provide meat and drink for her maimed soldiers. And so on down a long list of commodities.
All this means that before the mood cools we must conclude new commercial treaties with France and a.s.sure for ourselves a really favoured nation relation that carries the guarantee of a permanent foreign trade now so necessary to our permanent prosperity.
In the last a.n.a.lysis you will find that it is France and not England to whom we must look for the larger commercial kinship after the war. The spirit of the awakened Britain, so far as we are concerned, is the spirit of militant trade conquest: the dominant desire of the speeded-up France is benevolent Self-Sufficiency.
Whether England realises her vast dream remains to be seen. But one thing is certain: No man can watch France in the supreme Test of War without catching the thrill of her heroic endeavour, or feeling the influence of that immense and unconquerable serenity with which she has faced Triumph and Disaster. They proclaim the deathlessness of her democracy, the hope of a new world leadership in art and craft.
She will be a worthy trade ally.
V--_Saving for Victory_
By making patriotism profitable, England has enlisted an Army of Savers and launched the greatest of all Campaigns of Conservation. No contrast in the greatest of all conflicts is so marked as this flowering of thrift amid the ruins of a mighty extravagance. The story of Britain"s "Economy First" campaign is a chapter of regeneration through destruction that is full of interest and significance for every man, woman, and child in the United States. Through self-denial a complete revolution in national habits has begun. Out of colossal evil has come some good.
It has taken a desperate disease to invoke a desperate remedy. The average American, firm in his belief that he holds a monopoly on world waste, has had, almost without his knowledge, a formidable rival in England these past years. Whether the visiting Yankee tourist helped to set the pace or not, the fact remains that when the war broke over England she was as extravagant as she was unprepared.
The Englishman, like his American brother, though unlike the Scotch, is not thrifty by instinct. He regards thrift as a vice. He prefers to let the tax gatherer do his saving for him. He believes with his great compatriot Gladstone that "it is more difficult to save a shilling than to spend a million."
Contrasting the Englishman and the Frenchman in the matter of economy, you find this interesting parallel: With the Frenchman the first question that attends income is "How much can I _save_?" Saving is the supreme thing. With the Briton, however, it becomes a matter of "How much can I _spend_?" Saving is incidental.
To a.s.sociate thrift with the British workingman is to conceive a miracle. To be sure, he seldom had anything to save before the war. But with the speeding-up of industry to meet the insatiate hunger for munitions and the corresponding increase of from thirty to fifty per cent, even more, in wages, he suddenly began to revel in a wealth that he never dreamed was possible. The more he made the more he spent. He squandered his financial substance on fine cigars, expensive clothes, and excessive drinks, while his wife bedecked herself in gaudy finery and installed pianos or phonographs in her house. No one thought of To-morrow.
Just as it took the shock of a long succession of military reverses to rouse the English mind to the consciousness that the war would be long and bitter, so did the abuse of all this temporary and inflated war time prosperity bring to far-seeing men throughout England the realisation that the British people, and more especially those who worked with their hands, were booked for serious social and economic trouble when peace came, unless they saw the error of their wasteful ways.
"What can we do to stem this tide of extravagance and at the same time plant the seed of permanent thrift," asked these men who ranged from Premier to Prelate. No one knew better than they the difficulties of the task before them. In England, as in America, thrift is more regarded as a vice than a virtue. Like the taste for olives it is an acquired thing. To spend, not to save, is the instinct of the race.
But there were other and equally serious reasons why all England should buck up financially and make every penny do more than its duty. First and foremost was the terrific cost of the war that every day took its toll of $25,000,000; second was the enormous increase in imports and the diminished flow of exports, a reversal of pre-war conditions that meant that England each day was buying $5,000,000 worth of goods more than other countries were purchasing from her; third was the human shrinkage due to the incessant demand of battlefield and factory. Everywhere was colossal expenditure of men and money: nowhere existed check or restraint. Something had to be done.
It was generally admitted that the first thing for everybody to do was to spend less on themselves than in times of peace. When, where and how to save became the great question. To save money at the cost of efficiency for essential and urgent work was not true economy. "But,"
said the thrift promoters, "waste is possible even in the process of attaining efficiency. For example, people may eat too much as well as too little, they may buy more clothes than they actually need, ride when they could walk, employ a servant when they could do their own work, use their motors when they could travel in a tram."
Thus every cla.s.s came within the range of the lightning that was about to strike at the root of an ancient evil.
The start was interesting. Before the war was a year old definite order emerged of what was at the beginning a scattered protest against reckless spending. But long before the first organised message of saving went to the home and purse of the worker, the rich began to economise.
Here is where you encounter the first of the many ironies and contrasts that mark this whole campaign. The people who could most afford to be extravagant were the first to draw in their horns. This, of course, was not particularly surprising because the rich are naturally thrifty. It is one reason why they get and stay rich.
Among the pioneer organisations was the Women"s War Economy League founded and developed by a group of t.i.tled women who got hundreds of their sisters to pledge themselves to give up unnecessary entertaining, not to employ men servants unless ineligible for military service, to buy no new motor cars and use their old ones for public or charitable work, to buy as few expensive articles of clothing as possible, to reduce in every way their expenditures on imported goods, and to limit the buying of everything that came under the category of luxuries.
Champagne was banned from the dinner table, decollete gowns disappeared: men subst.i.tuted black for white waistcoats in the evening.
The rich really needed no organised stimulus to retrench. The great target for attack was the ma.s.s of the population who did not know what it meant to save and who required just the sort of constructive lesson that an organised thrift movement could teach.
Much of the increase in wages among the workers was going for food and drink. Hence the opening a.s.sault was made on the market bill.
Fortunately, an agency was already in operation. At the outbreak of the war a National Food Fund was started to feed the hungry Belgians. That work had become more or less automatic (the Belgians" appet.i.te is a pretty regular clock), so its machinery was now trained to the twin conservation of British stomachs and savings.
"Save the Food of the Nation," was the appeal that went forth on every side. "No One is too Rich or Poor to Help. Every man, woman and child in the country who wants to serve the state and help win the war can do so by giving thought to the question of conserving food. Since the great bulk of our food comes from abroad, it takes toll in men, ships and money. Every sc.r.a.p of food wasted means a dead loss to the Nation in men, ships and money. If all the food that is now being wasted could be saved and properly used it would spare more money, more ships, more men for the National defence."
Now began a notable campaign of education which was carried straight into the kitchen. Food demonstrators whose work ranged from showing the economy of cooking potatoes in their skins to making fire-less cookers out of a soap box and a bundle of straw, went up and down the Kingdom holding cla.s.ses. In town halls, schools, village centres and drawing-rooms, mistress and maid sat side by side. "Waste nothing," was the new watchword.
Backing up the uttered word was a perfect deluge of literature that included "Hand Books for House Wives," "Notes on Cooking," "Hints for Saving Fuel," "Economy in Food," in fact, dozens of pamphlets all showing how to make one sc.r.a.p of food or a single stick of wood do the work of two.
The people behind this movement knew that with waste of food was the kindred waste of money. They realised, too, that even the most effective preachment for food economy must inevitably be met by the cry, "Everybody must eat." With money, on the other hand, there seemed a better opportunity to drive home a permanent thrift lesson. So the forces that had built the bulwark around the English stomach now set to work to rear a rampart about the English pocketbook.
Circ.u.mstances played into their hand. The Great War Loan of $3,000,000,000 had just been authorised. "Why not make this loan the text of a great National thrift lesson and give every working man and woman a chance to become a financial partner of the Empire," said the saving mentors. It was decided to put part of this loan within the range of everybody, that is, to issue it in denominations from five shilling scrip pieces up, to sell it through the post office and thus bring the new savings bank to the very doors of the people.