of making taverns and public-houses not mere places for the sale and consumption of alcohol, but places of wholesome entertainment and comfort. If our working classes, and (it may be added) our commercial classes, could become accustomed to take alcohol only in such hours of rest and ease, they might learn almost unconsciously to use it in moderation, and they would enjoy its benefit without any drawback.

One more rule given by our advisers should be mentioned. To avoid,' they say, 'direct injury to the mucous membrane of the stomach, alcohol should not be taken in concentrated form and without food.' In plainer words, spirits should be avoided in favour of the milder beverages which are customary in social entertainments. It might be wished that more stress had been laid on one further warning, which is given in the concluding paragraph of the volume, namely, that 'alcoholic beverages are definitely injurious for children.' It would no doubt be a good thing if, except under medical advice in special cases, young men would abstain from such drinks until, in the strain and stress of active life, the need is felt of the special relief and refreshment which they afford after toil and exhaustion. If these principles and these practical rules are observed, the temperate consumption of alcoholic liquors may,' we are told (p. 133), 'be considered to be physiologically harmless in the case of the great majority of normal adults'; and they are thus legitimately enjoyable.

It should be added that this remarkable and important volume is but the first of a series of enquiries which are being set on foot by Lord D'Abernon and the Board of Control. In the preface, Lord D'Abernon states various important questions on which, he says, we have at present no really scientific knowledge. It is enough to mention the first of these questions, which involves practical considerations of the highest importance: 'In what way and to what extent, if at all, do solutions of ethyl alcohol in water, as commonly used in laboratory experiments, differ in their action on the nervous system from ordinary alcoholic beverages of corresponding strength such as beer, wines or spirits?' In point of fact we are not concerned, in practice, with pure alcohol. We drink beer or wine or spirits; and, unless general

belief on the subject is wholly mistaken, these beverages exert very various influences on the system. As an illustration, the following passage may be quoted from the delightful Manual on Diet in Health and Disease written by the late Dr King Chambers (1876, p. 328):

'In ague the combination in which Alcohol is offered is of considerable importance. The most generous red wines should be used; and the distance at which their bouquet may be smelt may be taken as a rough test of their utility. I remember learning a lesson on this point from a most unscientific source. I was chatting in the market-place at Dijon with a farmer's wife, when she incidentally mentioned that her husband was a great sufferer from ague, and was quite tired of swallowing quinine. I advised her to take home a good supply of Burgundy in her market-basket, and begged to contribute the few francs I had in my pocket. She tripped straight off to a grand wine-merchant's office; but, instead of coming out fully laden, she bore only two bottles, to the price of which she had contributed out of her own purse. It was of a vintage such as is allowed to trickle slowly over the tongue at the table of a prince; and I promptly called her a prodigal. "No, no," said she, "I am not; a mouthful of this is worth to a sick man a bucket of commoner wine-and yet the common wine of Dijon is not to be sneered at." She was quite right; there is no wine like Burgundy for ague, and the price (provided the merchant be honest) is a direct measure of its medicinal value.'

It is probable that wines have their specific influences on the system, as much as mineral waters; and it would be invaluable to have a scientific determination of the relative influences, for instance, of Champagne and Moselle, of white wines and red, and of the various species of each class; there must be something more than prejudice, for instance, in the special virtue for certain purposes attributed to Port. But it is an invaluable advantage to be at last given in this volume a really scientific verdict on the action on the human organism of alcohol itself, and to be thus placed in possession of a practical guide to its use on a thoroughly scientific basis.

H. WACE.

Art. 5. THE GERMAN BANKS AND 'PEACEFUL PENETRATION.'

1. Das Verhältnis der deutschen Grossbanken zur Industrie. By Otto Jeidels. Leipzig: Duncker and Humblot, 1905.

2. Die Konzentration im deutschen Bankwesen. By Paul Wallich. Stuttgart: Cotta, 1906.

3. Das englische Bankwesen. By Edgar Jaffé. 2te Auflage. Leipzig: Duncker and Humblot, 1910.

4. Die finanzielle Entwicklung der Aktiengesellschaften der deutschen chemischen Industrie,und ihre Beziehungen zur Bankwelt. By Rolf Grabower. Leipzig: Duncker and Humblot, 1910.

5. Die deutschen Grossbanken und ihre Konzentration im Zusammenhang mit der Entwicklung der Gesamtwirtschaft in Deutschland. By Jacob Riesser. 4te Auflage. Jena Fischer, 1912.

6. Das Bankgeschäft (I. Verkehrstechnik und BetriebsEinrichtungen. II. Bankpolitik). By Georg Obst. Leipzig: Poeschel, 1914.

7. Depositenbanken und Spekulationsbanken. By Adolf Weber. 2te Auflage. Leipzig: Duncker and Humblot, 1915.

8. The Record Cards of the London Branch of the Dresdner Bank.

AMONG the many features of the German national character which have been laid bare in nearly every part of the world since August 1914, few stand out more prominently than Germany's policy of 'peaceful penetration.' In the sphere of industry and finance the German banks have been the most effectual agency of this policy. They are a solid cogwheel in that system of 'national economics' which regards the State as an association based on military and industrial power. German industrial policy, in its concentration, its efforts to secure markets abroad, and its attitude to the State, is the policy of the 'great banks'-the term usually applied to the eight large Berlin banking houses, Schaaffhausenscher Bankverein, Darmstädter Bank, Diskontogesellschaft, Berliner Handelsgesellschaft, Mitteldeutsche Kreditbank, Deutsche Bank, Dresdner Bank and Nationalbank.

Despite surface appearances indicating a number of independent bodies each working for its own hand, there is in reality an astonishing harmony among the German banks, and this accounts for much of their success in in extending Deutschtum everywhere. They require no great clearing-house system. And this community of interests becomes more marked as the branches of these banks abroad secure a firmer and firmer footing in international finance, and it contrasts noticeably with our own 'competition for paper,' that is, for the business of negotiating bills, and our general lack of cohesion. One 'great bank' usually holds shares in several of the others; and since 1903 every one of them has an account, Dauernde Beteiligung an anderen Banken' (permanent share-interest in other banks). This is called the Beteiligungssystem, a term also applied sometimes to a bank's interests in industrial and commercial houses. In the balance sheet of the Diskontogesellschaft, published in the Banking Almanac,' 1914, the following items appear under Assets': 'Syndicates, securities, etc., 4,191,9321. Participation in other banks, 2,833,4527.' No items of this kind appear in any of the English balance sheets of the same publication. Herr Riesser (p. 614) and Herr Obst (II, 455, 475) lay considerable stress on the harmony of the relations existing between the great banks.' The former says that the 'great bank' views its functions as forming one unified programme-the promotion of economic, national, and State interests. This view raises its whole influence far above that of the small or mediocre institutions, which pursue a mere dividend policy. According to Herr Obst there is in the German banking world a sense of common aims, which creates an intense feeling of joint interest (Solidaritätsgefühl); and this contributes largely to expand German interests everywhere.

It was the crisis of 1901 that first revealed to the outsider how closely German banks had become involved in the promotion and formation of companies, and how vast was the number of industrial securities which they held. But concentration in German industry had set in long before the banks became its great feeders. The Kartells having forced the banks to strengthen their basis of operations, the initiative in the matter of

organising industrial concentration now proceeds from the banks. Herr Grabower (pp. 110-6) and Herr Jeidels (pp. 114–6, 152–4) give many interesting particulars of the interlocking of directorates and the reciprocal influence exerted by bank and industrial combine. Herr Weber (p. 338) says that the brilliant development of Germany's foreign trade would not have been even conceivable without the vigorous intervention of the banks, which at an early period began to pursue 'an industrial policy of large scope,' in marked contrast with the attitude of English banks to trade and industry. The latter devoted their attention to banking operations in the strict sense, or what writers like Riesser and Jeidels call rein bankgeschäftliche Tätigkeit.

It is in pursuing this programme of combined 'bankpolicy' and 'industry-policy,' that the German banks have been most successful in 'penetrating' other countries. They work along five main lines.

(1) They establish abroad branches or daughterinstitutions for the German industrial firm. The Dresdner Bank not only financed, but was the prime mover in establishing, the Russian Maschinenfabrik Hartmann,' which is purely a Chemnitz concern. Several German banks co-operated to establish in Italy a daughter-society of the Schuckert electrical house.

(2) They found altogether new industries. The Società Elettro-Chimica, in Rome, was founded by the Dresdner Bank, and the Compania Viscaina de Elektricidad, in Bilbao, by the Berliner Handelsgesellschaft.

(3) They seek an interest in existing foreign concerns. Since the war a good deal has been written about the German metal 'octopus,' and especially about its control of the Australian metal market. The most concrete expression of its pre-war influence is to be found in the necessity of such a measure as the Non-Ferrous Metal Industry Act, 1918, and in the contract between the Australian mining companies and the British Imperial Government, under which the latter agrees to purchase for the period of the war and ten years thereafter the entire production from Jan. 1, 1918. But behind the activities of Aron Hirsch und Sohn, and of Halberstadt and Frankfort-on-the-Main, stood the great German banks, whose agents each specialised in some particular