But there is
no other capitalist who claims, or can pretend to claim, that he has very
appreciably _helped_ the activities of his people in war. I will suppose
that Lipton did not deserve the very severe criticisms made on his firm by
Mr. Justice Darling; but, however blameless he was, nobody can suppose
that British soldiers would charge better with the bayonet because they
had some particular kind of groceries inside them. But Krupp can make a
plausible claim that the huge infernal machines to which his country owes
nearly all of its successes could only have been produced under the
equally infernal conditions of the modern factory and the urban and
proletarian civilisation. That is why the victory of Germany would be
simply the victory of Krupp, and the victory of Krupp would be simply the
victory of Capitalism. There, and there alone, Capitalism would be able
to point to something done successfully for a whole nation--done (as it
would certainly maintain) better than small free States or natural
democracies could have done it. I confess I think the modern Germans
morally second-rate, and I think that even war, when it is conducted most
successfully by machinery, is second-rate war. But this second-rate war
will become not only the first but the only brand, if the cannon of Krupp
should conquer; and, what is very much worse, it will be the only
intelligent answer that any capitalist has yet given against our case that
Capitalism is as wasteful and as weak as it is certainly wicked.
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