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Transport and the Wounded Soldier. Fords in Berlin.
S034E MONTHS AGO attention was drawn in these pages, in an rtide entitled " Safety First for Wounded Soldiers," to the undoubted necessity, on the part of those charged with the conduct of public-service passenger traffic particularly, to take measures to assist the movements of the hosts of maimed men who will undoubtedly form part and parcel of our everyday life for many years to come. Since those words were penned, and in the natural course of war-time's horrible happenings, the numbers of wounded men amongst us, either discharged or in the convalescent stage, have increased remarkably. The .horror and pity of it all is with us more than ever, and it cannot escape notice that appropriate steps will inevitably have to be taken to facilitate their transport, both in the interests of the poor fellows themselves and of the public with whom they will have to live and work.
Particularly will it be necessary to make arrangements, wherever it is possible, to afford those men who are hampered by leg injuries special facilities in connection with travelling by motorbus, tramcar, tube and train. The enormous numbers of such men in all combatant countries, for whom such consideration is nothing less than a duty, renders it not only desirable but quite necessary that steps should be taken at an, early date to procure that they shall not have to scramble and rush with the fit and the well to secure positions and 'seats in queues and in crowded public passenger carriages.
There is the other side of the question, which from the national point of view is no less important, and that is that, unless arrangements are made of a suitable nature, the presence of so many more or less incapacitated individuals will necessarily bring with itobstruction to rapid transport of many kinds. For instance, it is no infrequent thing to see nowadays a whole line of several hundred passengers held up entirely by their natural unwillingness to push past-sonie poor fellow who has to hobble along on crutches, or through some other sad disability to move quickly. On the tubes is this particularly noticeable_ Delays, too, are inevitable, unless special facilities are afforded to such men on the buses and tramcars in the ordinary street traffic of today.
it is difficult to suggest who 'should be the proper authority to conceive and initiate such facilities, but the trouble will in the end be so great a one that some action is certainly no less in the interests of the men, who have a prescriptive right to every possible consideration, and who will retain such right so long as they are with us, than of the ordinary public upon whose activities the country's commercial recovery will so greatly depend. It is conceivable that something in this direction might be done by the Ministry of Pensions, the capable Minister in charge of which helpful organization has already shown praiseworthy desire to be of assistance in excess of his terms of reference—all power to his elbow. Surely, too, the Ministry of Reconstruction might detail some capable assistant to investigate the whole subject. Much, however, would be possible if the enlightened authorities who are in control of metropolitan traffic were to take into consideration this matter, both from humanitarian and utilitarian points of view. The Safety First authorities should get busy. The travelling public only wants a lead.
Fords in Berlin. '
Immensely refreshing and heartening as is the measure of American assistance at this stage of the world's struggle, ponderous as is the weight added to the tipping scale now over-balancing against the Hun, one cannot refrain from remarking a certain piquancy in the situation which has called into the opposing lists two such classic opponents in certain specific directions of world enterprise. Both the American and the German, to say nothing of the Jap, have of late years specially developed that class of manufacturing skill and enterprise that has been devoted to the multiple. production of cheaply conceived and cheaply produced merchandiseWith few exceptions, Great Britain has not held the world's markets either on account of quantity or cheapness. Most of Britain's trade the world over has been secured on account of the reputation of its merchandise for quality, and for quality alone.
When it has been a case of huge consumption of articles that are good enough and cheap enough to command an enormous sale, we in thin country have been inclined to be satisfied with reaping the benefit of the cheap purchases such production elsewhere has afforded. As a result, the twoother greatest manufacturing countries in the world, America and Germany, have increasingly, of late years, concentrated on the cheaper markets ; Japan is rapidly advancing. Germany's productions in this direction before the war were known and recognized in many directions. It remained for.war-tirne investigation to reveal many unsuspected cases of a similar nature. America, of course, has a classic example in the Ford, and a glance through the import lists of goods imported from over the herring pond reveals many other instances sudh, for instance as that of cheap watches, in which the American 11.1s thought on somewhat similar lines to the German.
And now it has fallen to the lot of America to assist in administering the coup de grace to the Hun's claims of commercial world dominance. Surely enough, America will not be altogether displeased, as an auxiliary result of cleansing the world from the Prussian blight; to have contributed so materially to the ruination of Germany's trade in cheap goodenough production. It is certain that, in spite of all • Germany's boastings as to its disregard of all that America can do, it is not less fearful of the effect of our new ally's colossal activities in its own particular productive trade domain than it is of the effect on its military prowess. Certain it is, too, that,America's methods of capturing the world's markets in spite of its own impregnable tariff wall will appreciate very considerably, as the result of the undermining of Germany's competitive manufacturing and distributing network. They are peculiarly appropriate antagonists. One is led to wonder what sort of market there will be for Ford cars in Germany when peace has been signed in Berlin, and similarly what will be the value of Germany's imports into America in the days to come—and incidentally where Britain will come in.