350
58 BRITONS V. GERMANS IN CHINA looms of Lancashire and Yorkshire. The trade amounts to millions of pounds annually, and the astonishing belief, still expressed freely by many Manchester men, that Germans were the only people who could sell their wares for them in China, is the chief cause which compelled the writer to publish this book. This peculiar and absolutely wrong impression would be more comprehensible if the Manchester and Bradford merchants of German extraction could be said to have influenced and cul- tivated it to any extent. There hundreds of Manchester firms bearing obviously German names, but in most cases they have been so long established that their entire management and ownership have been British for generations. Many of these firms have suffered a good deal of annoyance by reason of the suspicions naturally cast upon their names,
and a
are
59
BRITONS V. GERMANS IN CHINA large number have felt this so acutely that they have changed their names for British
From many
letters received by the
ones.
liquidators it is clear that these firms are almost entirely actuated by a patriotic spirit, and have British interests at heart. But the surprising part comes when many of the typically old-fashioned Lancashire and Yorkshire merchants, bearing old and respected British names, were found to be so infatuated with their German correspond- ents in China that nothing short of Govern- ment intervention was able to stop their continued trading with enemy firms after Some of the letters received by liquidators from Manchester firms have shown a most disgraceful and incredible lack of patriotism.
the war.
The Germans were first responsible for the introduction of the credit to cut system which enabled them in and make
very fair start
a
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