From The Waste of War, The Spectator, 5 December 1914:
The destruction which the Germans have wrought in the towns and villages they have occupied is a net loss to the world. Before the war began these aspects of war had impressed the minds of many writers even more than now appears to be justifiable. We had, for example, the famous book of the Russian writer M. Jean Bloch, who, at the end of the nineteenth century, demonstrated to his own satisfaction that a European war would not take place, because it would involve such wholesale destruction and such a universal increase of prices that normal human life would become impossible. M. Bloch was followed by Mr. Norman Angell. Events have shown the complete unsoundness of these calculations. So far from prices reaching a prohibitive point, they have as the war proceeded continued to fall, and a good many American and other speculators have suffered accordingly.
Until the outbreak of war Germany was able to extend her commerce and her influence in all parts of the world by the persistent energy of her people working in foreign countries, sometimes as clerks, sometimes as scientific specialists, sometimes as business managers, or as partners in industrial concerns. The reputation which Germany has created for herself by her diplomacy and by her methods of waging war will inevitably cut away the greater part of the advantages which she had gained in these directions. For many years to come people in business will look askance at Germans, and this factor will probably prove more injurious to Germany’s commercial future than any other single cause.
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