IS AMERICA A MATCH FOR US? .
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ELSEWHERE, consigned to their appropriate place in this issue, may be found some quips emanating from a particularly observant per-. sonality who has recently spent some little while in the States on business bent. In conversation of a more serious nature with this returned traveller I must admit to having been impressed with some of his very definite convictions with regard to certain of the more important phases of America's coming industrial onslaught. '
Primarily, I was told that, beneath the char_ acteristic egotism of the conventional Yankee, there is at the present time an unmistakable inclination on his part to be more than considerably nervous of Great Britain's commercial activities in the near future. Indeed, my informant relates that in the course of conversation with one prominent industrial magnate in America he was astounded to be told that Great Britain is probably the best organized state in the whole world of commerce at the present time, but, as usual, she doesn't realize it.". If If this may be accepted as anything in the. nature of a representative point of view from our friends across the Atlantic, the statement it contains will astonish no one so much as the Britisher, who almost habitually belittles his own country. Who indeed of all of us would care to advance the theory, without thinking twice, that, given the "will to co-operate," the sweetly reasonable spirit of compromise, we can walk right and beat the world in commerce. And, however strange such a possibility may sound to ears attuned to controversial industrial strivings, to the bleatings and brayings of this, that and the other conference, committee and commission, is it not just possible—indeed probable', that the American's point of view is after all, a keen and accurate one ? He 'thinks that we shall, if we are not fortunately prevented, gather to ourselves all that matters, or at least all that we want, of the trade of reconstructing Europe, that our proximity and our new-found sense of our own ability constitute a very real threat to America's 'dreams of post-war advantage, in Europe, at any rate.
If we are to live up to this -reported American measurement of our new capacity, output and still output is the great thing for which to strive. Price at present is of relatively little moment.
The workers' present policy of artificially limited output, pursued for his collective ends, is the one way in which American competition may after all be allowed to effect its worst. America's strong point is output and nothing but output. Methods, material, i design, experience; n none of these essentials need we Confess to being surpassed—but in quantity, yes. It would do good if we could believe—and keep re. peating it—that the Americans are afraid of our competition. That is the very kind of mental food we • Britishers like, but, curiously enough, it is exactly the other kind of sustenance we seek if left to ourselves.
TIRESIAS.