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France — i.e., that Frenchmen would have been better off if they had not borrowed abroad larger quantities of useful capital at lower rates than they could get at home? In some French and Italian enterprises German investors, or even German banks, doubtless exercised a preponderant control, as British investors or financial companies do in Argentina and many other countries. But in what sense has the war exhibited these operations as "economic slavery," unless in the sense in which Socialists regard all capitalist control in this light?

The German State has doubtless had a powerful secret service in many foreign countries, and may have utilized branches of German firms abroad as sources of political information. The widespread employment of German clerks in foreign commercial houses has undoubtedly given German firms a fuller knowledge of the business conditions of their foreign competitors than commercial firms in England possess.

But all these arts and practices are nothing