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The
36 BRITONS V. GERMANS IN CHINA venience would have been caused. British banks themselves would have lost stupendous sums, and altogether a com- mercial crash of exceptional severity would have resulted. Hundreds of native shops and small businesses had become depen- dent on the long credits the Germans were wont to grant them. It is a feather in their cap for the Chinese to have in so short a period rearranged their trade, so that in addition to having paid up nearly all their outstanding debts to German and British fims, they are now working mainly on a cash basis. Is it any wonder that British merchants do not look forward to the time when our Teutonic friends propose to resume their business in our midst, with every prospect of a revival of their pernicious credit system, attended as this is by its long train of worries, and incentive to fraud and overtrading?
BRITONS V. GERMANS IN CHINA
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The conclusions to be drawn from our now riper knowledge of the mysterious workings of the German merchant mind are so varied as to be difficult to set forth and classify. What we must chiefly re- cognise is that had the Germans out here been more united in their purpose to drive out everyone else from trade; had they used more co-operation and wisdom in obtaining their share, the result would long ago have been felt in a serious set-back to British and
other trade interests in the Far East. It is enough to realise that the liquidations have revealed that the Germans, through their dubious and distasteful methods, were al ready controlling far too large a slice of trade that should rightly have been in British hands, and, but for their jealousies, and the intense desire of each individual German firm to subdue all competitors in sight (quite irrespective of nationality), it would
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