German Industry After the War

Abstract

III. MM. JAUREGUY, FROMENT, AND STEPHEN conclude their series of communications to the Bulletin de la Société d' Encouragement pour I'Industrie Nationale (see NATURE for September 26 and October 3) on the influence of the war on German industry with some interesting reflections on its after-effects, temporary and permanent. There can be no doubt that the isolation of Germany for so long a period has occasioned profound modifications in her industrial and commercial position. Whatever may be the ultimate result of the struggle, she no longer hopes, for the victory on which, at the outset, she confidently reckoned. All her energies are now directed to avert or to minimise the disastrous consequences which await her. The era of peaceful penetration is, at an end. She realises that she has incurred a world-wide hatred, and that the world's markets are no longer open to her on pre-war terms. Moreover, she is face to face with an unlooked-for and astonishing development on the part of her most powerful enemies of those industries in which she was supreme, and which she trusts may still enable her to recover, to some extent, her lost position. These industries, indeed, are the main means by which she hopes to get over her immediate financial difficulties, to retrieve her commercial credit, and so enable her to purchase the enormous supplies of raw materials of which she is in urgent need..