Part 13

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 bloody 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 Cock, 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 Cock 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 Marseilles has a stamp showing the French Cock 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 document 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 principal 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 assumed that he knew what he wanted and made it for him. The average American exporter, on the other hand, has always assumed 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 hoardings, 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 accumulate 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 assure 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 analysis 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.