Much larger fry is England where the firm of Vickers-Armstrongs is the brightest star in the armament firmament. The annual bills of Vickers-Armstrongs to nations for armaments purchased quite possibly amount to $100,000,000. For England's powerful position as one of the greatest exporters of the materials of war in the world, the bulk of the credit goes to Vickers-Armstrongs. It makes other things than armaments, true enough; such unwarlike products as sewing machines and golf clubs come from its factories. But its chairman, General the Hon. Sir Herbert Lawrence, G. C. B., onetime Chief of Staff of the B. E. F., has put himself on record as saying. "Vickers-Armstrongs. Ltd., relies very largely on armament orders for its existence." The Vickers research staffs work constantly to bring into mass production such bolsters to international comfort as the Vickers-Garden-Lloyd Light Amphibious Tank, or the Vickers Vildebeest Bombing Machine.

The sun never sets upon Vickers. It has its factories in Rumania where, for greater convenience, Sir Herbert Lawrence is a director of the Bank of Rumania (and Vickers to some degree allies itself with the Czechoslovakian armament firm of Skoda). In Italy it Latinizes its name to Societa Vickers-Terni; in Japan it has as a subsidiary the Japan Steel Works, and thus allies itself with the Japanese armament and industrial firm of Mitsui. There are Vickers factories or subsidiary companies in Spain, Canada, Ireland, Holland (The Hague offers an appropriate site for some of the Vickers operations), and New Zealand.

Vickers directors are men of wide affairs. Sir Herbert Lawrence, besides being a director of the Bank of Rumania, is also a director of the Sun Insurance Office, Ltd., with which Vickers-Armstrongs had a curious agreement that "if the profits (of Vickers) in any year during the five years ending December 31, 1932, do not amount to $900,000, then a contribution not exceeding $200,000 will be made in each year." Sir Otto Niemeyer, the infant phenomenon of British finance who first entered His Majesty's Treasury at the age of twenty-three, is another Vickers director; he is, addition, an officer of the Bank of England, a director of the Anglo-international Bank and the Bank of International Settlements.

Through these industrial and financial interlockings Vickers-Armstrongs conducts its affairs. They are profitable affairs for as the agreement with the Sun Insurance indicates, a profit of some $4,500,000 a year is considered so unsatisfactory that insurance must be carried against it. And England's aristocracy takes pleasure in clipping its coupons. Among the more prominent shareholders, in 1932, of Vickers or other concerns associated with the production of materials of war were; Rt. Hon. Neville Chamberiain, Chancellor of the Exchequer, and Sir Austen Chamberiain, M. P., winner of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1925. In 1914 the list was even more imposing. It included that lofty philosopher Lord Balfour, that glittering such Lord Curzon, and also Lord Kinnaird (President of the Y. M. C. A.). three bishops, and Dean Ingo of St.Paul's. It was in that same year that Socialist Philip Snowden spoke in Parliament; "It would be impossible to throw a stone on the benches opposite without hitting a member who is a shareholder in one or other of these firms."

You will gather that England, peace-loving England, has been quite some time at the task of building up this organization She has. The firm began in 1829. Slowly, throughout the nineteenth century, the firm grew, changed it name, cast its outworn skins, grew fat, prosperous, and highly multicellular through the acquisition of this forpedo works, of that heavy ordnance factory. And then there came along Mr.Basilelos Zachavias.

He is known today as Sir Basil Zaharoff. He was on intimate of Lloyd George during the war; a few relatively mild revelations of the degree to which he influenced Great Britain's armament, military, and foreign policies during and after the war were enough, in 1922, to send Lloyd George, who did more than any other man to win the way out of office forever. This strange character, the greatest armament salesman the world has ever known, struck a major spark in the world when he collided with an American of somewhat similar interests. Zaharoff at that time was a salesman for the Nordenfeldt Guns & Ammunition Co., Ltd., of England and had done very well in profits out of the perpetual dogfights in the Balkans and the Near East, to which he was puryeyor and of which he was frequently (it was an easy trick once he learned it) instigator. The American that gladdened his heart was Hiram Maxim, whose new machine gun was incomparably the best killing machine Zaharoff had ever seen. Zaharoff took Maxim to his bosom, with reservations. First he used his wily, polyglot salesmanship to block the gun's sale in Austria as an impractical toy; them, when he had offered Maxim a partnership and get the sale of the gun firmly in his own hands he swept over Europe and Asia selling such quantities that soon the new firm of the Maxim-Nordenfeldt Guns & Ammunition Co. was purchased for some $6,000,000 (the year was 1897) by Vickers interests and became Vickers Sons & Maxim. Sir Basil was established now as a power in armament affairs, hence, in Great Britain's affairs, hence in world affairs. He already enjoyed the distinction of having sold the first practical submarine ever used in naval operations o his native Greece, and the further distinction of having used this sale to frighten Turkey into buying TWO submarines. The Boer War added to his laurels; Boers shot Englishmen with Vickers guns and ammunition. The Russo-Japanese War provided him with an even wider field for his gifts; Vickers sold as much was material (and possibly more) to Russia as it did to Japan, England's supposed ally.

But, naturally, it was the World War that gratified Sir Basil Most. The profits of war time armament manufacture were practically incalculable; by the end of the war Sir Basil had a personal fortune that was estimated as low as $100,000,000 or $200,000,000 and as high as a billion. And in 1917 when there seemed a possibility of peace through the intervention of the United States, Lord Bertie, British Ambassador to France, naively recorded in his diary: "Zaharoff is all for continuing the war jusqu'au bout."

So much for Germany and her Krupp, the United States and Bethlehem Steel. England and Vickers-Armstrongs, and the new withered and scutle Sir Basil. Do these armament businesses seem Big Business." Then you must alter your sense of proportion before you go further. All the foregoing is a more cuvtam vaiser to the Big Show. The Big Show is France.