Britain and Germany

Abstract

So much in the whole debate turns on the relative merits of Britain and Germany that the theme deserves separate attention. There is no question of Germany’s ability, before the First World War, to ‘dominate the markets of her neighbours’.¹ She was the limitrophe state in Continental Europe, and her advantage in position and communications was overwhelming. By 1910 British imports were still ahead of German in France, Spain, Portugal, Turkey and Greece; in every other country on the Continent Germany had taken the lead. As a correspondent reported to The Times in April 1914, the figures for German success in Russia were now so overwhelming that little room was left for the comfortable hypothesis that Russian statistics were unreliable and that ‘German’ merchandise was an inaccurate description of the mass of material merely passing through Germany on transit.²