Dragons' Teeth

MERCHANTS OF DEATH--H. C. Engelbrecht & F. C. Hanighen--Dodd, Mead ($2.50).

IRON, BLOOD AND PROFITS--George Seldes--Harper ($2.50).

If, as shrewd Editor A. R. Orage (The New English Weekly) has said, modern civilization is a race between education and disaster, 1934 may clear away some handicapping hurdles from education's many-obstacled lane. Last March FORTUNE-readers gasped at a devastating exposure of the international armaments industry ("Arms and the Men"). Last fortnight appeared two books on the same subject, one of them (Merchants of Death) sponsored by the Book-of-the-Month Club. The Senate has authorized an investigation of U. S. arms manufacturers. Old George Bernard Shaw might well have said: "I started it." His play, Major Barbara (1905) contained the first popular warning against munitions makers but, like many another Shavian admonition, was taken as a joke.

Authors Engelbrecht & Hanighen write with deliberate caution, ring in no rhetoric, rely on the weight of their documented evidence. Author Seldes' barrage of accusations covers more ground but cumbers his case in a mass of minor allegations. After listening to their double indictment of the international armament ring, the jury of readers will need little deliberation before bringing in a verdict of guilty.

Four biggest arms makers are England's Vickers-Armstrong, France's Schneider-Creusot, Germany's Krupp, Czechoslovakia's Skoda. Their interlocking connections (which Authors Engelbrecht & Hanighen show in charts) are almost incredibly complex; the only real competitor any of them has is peace. Says Author Seldes: "It is a recurrent paradox of the international gun trade that nations arm their enemies." During the War German scrap iron at the rate of 150,000 tons a month was shipped into France, via Switzerland. French bauxite (aluminum) found its way into the construction of German submarines; German barbed wire helped defend Verdun.

Vickers appropriated a Krupp invention, a special fuse for hand grenades. After the War Krupp sued Vickers in the English courts for violation of patent rights, asked 123,000,000 shillings (a shilling a fuse) damages. Vickers settled out of court, paid Krupp in Vickers stock. When the bewildered reader asks, "How can such things be?" Attorneys Engelbrecht, Hanighen & Seldes point out that these sowers of dragons' teeth are mighty members of their countries' councils, control big newspapers and bigger banks; that their governments, which cannot afford to run state-owned arms industries, cannot afford to let their armorers go idle or elsewhere.

The U. S. arms industry, say Attorneys Engelbrecht & Hanighen, is comparatively innocent. Biggest U. S. ammunition maker is Du Pont, whose business is so diversified that only 2% of it in the last two years has been military products. "There is no single armament company in the U. S. comparable to the Schneider group in France or Vickers-Armstrong in England." As far as deliberately fomenting breaches of the peace is concerned, U. S. arms makers might echo Bannerman & Sons' conscious innocence: "No firearms are ever sold in our store to any minor. We will not sell weapons to anyone who we think would endanger the public safety." Machine-gunmen get their "typewriters" from abroad, probably from Belgium. But Seldes accuses U. S. armament makers (Bethlehem Steel et al.) of profiteering and connivance, thinks the answer to the arms makers' dangerous dominance is government-owned munitions factories:

"The World War . . . has shown that armaments are an incentive, one of the main causes of war. . . . No reason for war remains except sudden profits for the 50 men who run the munitions racket. . . . The first real step . . . is the destruction of the world-wide munitions racket. It will cost millions of dollars. It will save millions of lives."

The Authors. Helmuth Carl Engelbrecht, Columbia Ph. D., 39, pacifist, associate editor of The World Tomorrow, met Frank Cleary Hanighen, Harvardman, 35, then editorial factotum with Publisher Dodd, Mead, last autumn, discovered a mutual interest in munitions makers, decided to collaborate. Each had already written one book: Engelbrecht, a study of Johann Gottlieb Fichte; Hanighen, a biography of Santa Anna. Roving Newshawk George Seldes, brother to Litterateur Gilbert Seldes, has taken the lid off many a pot of trouble, stirred it with journalistic zeal. Onetime reporter on the Chicago Tribune, he has dabbled in Art, is now a freelance, has written four books (You Can't Print That!, Can These Things Be!, The Vatican).

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