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EXPORT TRADE WAS WIED OUT OUTOwing Owing to tlie Jtritish control of the sea as the New York Journal of Commerce reminds us the outbreak of the war automatically wiped out u Ger ¬ man export trade valued in 1913 at 2400000000 It would be within the power of such an economic league as Lord Kobert Cecil indicates to make a great part of this loss permanent Rut this power will only IH exercised it seems against a Germany that persists in clinging to false gods In his mes ¬ sage to Congress on December 4 President Wilson suggested that if after the war the German people continue to be obliged to live under ambitious and intriguing masters interested to disturb the peace of the world it might be impossible to admit them to the partnership of the nations or to free economic intercourse Says Lord Robert RobertThere There is but one obstacle to this economic asso ¬ ciation of nations That obstacle is Germany the Germany Tlescribed by 1reident Wilson in the words which I have already quoted a Germany living un ¬ der ambitious and intriguing masters You have rpcn the provisions of her commercial treaties in the east and with all the groups of peoples from te Arctic ocean to the Black sea Her economic policy toward these groups is absolutely contrary to ourprinciples That policy began by systematic and lawless plundering in Poland in the Ukraine and elsewhere 2 oiv everywhere she lias legalized this I blunder by placing the weaker nations under onerous commercial tribute to herself On Lithuania she has imposed her coinage From lioumania and the Ukraine she lias exacted a guaranty of supplies irre ¬ spective of their own needs and at flagrantly unjust rates of compensation She has appropriated the natural resources of Roumanla in the form of a lease to German corporations On Russia Finland and the Ukraine she has imposed unfair and one ¬ sided tariff arrangements The people of Finland in fact find now that their liberties have been bartered away in an agreement signed secretly in Berlin and it is actually being proposed that thousands of Finns should be deported to work for German masters mastersLord Lord Kobert reminds us it is stiil essential that we should forestall the aggressive efforts of the Central Powers to use their money to snatch on the morning after the war the raw materials needed for the reconstruction of tlie peoples in the western and eastern theatres of war whum they have them ¬ selves despoiled
