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April 13th, 1916.
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thousand, that is to say I first renounced the nationality of the
In fact, my case of naturalization is one in many
State of my birth (Bremen, then an independent anti-Prussian Republic), and only thereafter swore allegiance to Queen Victoria. I am travel- ling under a full and unrestricted Passport, such as is not issued to people holding naturalization papers without a certificate of previous denationalization.
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As to my Company having traded with German firms in China, I should like to repeat what my partner has so aptly expressed in one e his letters to your Chamber, namely that to have done so - as did more- over every English firm who could but make money our of the Germans 13 of as little importance as the blood relationship between the Courts of St. James and Berlin. Moreover, there are many true and loyal English. men, among them such men as Lord Bryce, who are even now advocating an untrammelled trade with Germany and Austria after the war.
Of course, these men argue
from a purely soonomic) point of view, excluding the Justified popular feeling against Germany, and it is for the latter reason that I my self disagree with them and do not desire to trade again with German 3.
Last, but not least, I think you would find it difficult to Deet a man in England who within four weeks of the outbreak of war, wrote to his German business connections: "we do hope that it will once for 111 do away with Prussian militarism", after having stigmatised the war as: "a disgrace to our present-day civilization" (vide my Side Issues of the World War.) This, inter alia, is what the Secretary of the China Association referred to when he wrote you at the time that: "at
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