Hence arose a trade rivalry, against which we could not hope to contend successfully in the long run, except by a complete revolution in our methods of education and business, to which neither the Government nor the dominant class would consent.
"This remarkable advance in Germany, also, was accompanied by the establishment of a system of banking, specially directed to the expansion of national industry and commerce, a system which was clever enough to use French accumulations, borrowed at a low rate of interest, through the German Jews who so largely controlled French financial institutions, in order still further to extend their own trade.

It was an admirably organized attempt to conquer the world-market for commodities, in which the Government, the banks, the manufacturers and the shipowners all worked for the common cause.
Meanwhile, both French and English financiers carefully played the game of their business opponents, and the great English banks devoted their attention chiefly to fostering speculation on the Stock Exchange--a policy of which the Germans took advantage, just before the outbreak of war, to an extent not by any means as yet fully understood.
"Thus, at the beginning of the present year, in spite of the withdrawal, since the Agadir affair, of very large amounts of French capital from the German market, Germany had attained to such a position that only the United States stood on a higher plane in regard to its future in the world of competitive commerce.

And this great and increasing economic strength was, for war purposes, at the disposal of the Prussian militarists, if they succeeded in getting the upper hand in politics and foreign affairs." FOOTNOTES: [25] Works on the Thirty Years' War are numerous.

Many scholarly and exhaustive treatises on various aspects of the subject are, as might be expected, to be found in German.

For general popular reading Schiller's excellent piece of literary hack work (translated in Bonn's Library) may still be consulted, but perhaps the best short general history of the war with its entanglement of events is that by the late Professor S.R.
Gardiner, of Oxford, which forms one of the volumes of Messrs.