Imperial Elite

Chapter 104 A New and Better World
In fact, among those summoned by His Majesty George were not only Joe and Sir Cumming, but also many cabinet ministers, as well as other colonial governors who happened to be returning to the mainland for various reasons.

The main reason His Majesty George summoned so many people was that 1920 was not a good year for Bonitania.

To be precise, since the outbreak of the war, Buntania has never known what a good year is.

Although in that devastating war, the heartland of Buntania was not as ravaged as Gaul, with its most fertile regions suffering the same fate.

At most, it was just some airships and bombers dropping some bombs.

However, for Bonitania, such bombing could only serve as a deterrent to civilians, and its actual destructive effect was less than that caused by strikes due to war-weariness.

However, in order to sustain the war, Buntania not only emptied its coffers but also incurred a lot of foreign debt. When it was time to recover its losses from the Teutons after the war ended, Buntania discovered that it was not the only one who had gone bankrupt due to borrowing money to fight the war.

The inability to recover the money originally intended from the Teutons has created a problem: the Bonitania economy is starting to stagnate.

Those who frequently create empires, build cities, and traverse the stars know that if you want to accelerate economic development, moderate borrowing is an essential part of the process.

Loans for construction can greatly stimulate economic development, allowing things that might have taken ten years to complete to be put into production next year.

No one can resist the allure of such rapid development, but there is a small problem here.

That is, the economic operation of lending and development is like two flywheels connected by a belt. Once the fragile belt called capital breaks, the flywheel called capital and development will begin to slow down or even stop.

Then the mountain of debt will fall down, making people lose everything, even their underwear, if they still have underwear at that time.

Although Bonitania's economy is not at a standstill, the economic situation is not optimistic.

First, the post-war disarmament and awards cost the government a large sum of money, and this money could not be spared. After spending a large sum of money again, the Prime Minister promoted housing reform, promising to build "Heroes' Homes" by constructing 200,000 new homes to stimulate the economy.

However, these economic stimulus measures do not seem to have the desired effect. The anticipated post-war economic prosperity has arrived, but unfortunately, the prosperity is not in Bonitania itself, but in the United States across the ocean.

This economic prosperity is in the wrong place!

If there was anything worse than the economic prosperity that should have come but did not, it was that something had happened to the empire's most important Eastern colonies.

While Joe was dealing with Emerald Isle, a wave of protests broke out, and the governor in the East was clearly not as capable as Joe.

He also mobilized troops, and wherever Joe went, the people welcomed him with open arms, which was hardly the attitude one would expect from a force sent to quell a rebellion.

The residents of the Eastern colonies did come out to welcome them, but only under the bayonets of the colonial troops, amidst mountains of corpses piled up in the distance.

With things having escalated to this point, it has naturally become difficult to continue making a fortune from the colonies in the East.

If it were just a problem with one colony, that would be fine. After all, as the British Empire, Bonitania had countless colonies around the world. If you didn't pay, there were plenty of other places where you would.

For Bonitania, based on experience over the past few centuries, colonization is a business that is guaranteed to be profitable.

Conquer a land by force, then have the locals supply raw materials to the mainland, then have the mainland export manufactured goods to the colony to reap the price scissors, and then rely on those particularly outstanding locals or natives to exercise mandate rule over this land.

This system has made Bonitania incredibly wealthy over the past few centuries, especially since those troublesome local figures could be directly sent to the colonies, which was a huge relief.

However, after the war, Buntania found that the situation seemed to have changed somewhat.

In the past, except for some barren lands where you could only watch black men grin and not squeeze any profit out of them, colonization was a business that would never lose money.

Once the land is cleared, plantations, and mines are set up, can this still be compensated?
However, now, due to the devastating war, not only were large amounts of funds originally intended to keep the colony running consumed, but also the creditors and debtors who enabled the colony to operate, and even the native elites who were eager to become Dalit foremen were also depleted.

At the same time, one of the requirements for the United States to join the war was to implement the Open Door Policy, meaning that we do not establish colonies, but are merely transporters of industrial goods.

As the United States also began exporting capital and industrial goods, these massive plantations and mines actually started losing money.

This could be fatal for Bunitania.

His Majesty George feared that the large-scale protests in the Eastern colonies were just the beginning of a chain reaction of colonial collapse.

To prevent the worst-case scenario from occurring, His Majesty George began summoning the empire's pillars and key ministers for questioning, to see if these imperial elites had any ideas on how to turn the situation around.

Logically speaking, Joe, as someone with an elementary school degree, should not be qualified to participate in this discussion.

They weren't even qualified to stand guard at the gate.

However, in 1920, no one dared to truly regard Joe as someone with only an elementary school education.

After all, the things Joe did are things that even a primary school student couldn't do, and even a PhD would have to shake their head in disbelief.

So George summoned Joe to the palace to ask him if he had any ideas on the current situation.

When faced with His Majesty George's question, George pondered for a moment before responding.

There are solutions, of course. Faced with the impending economic crisis, it's simply a matter of increasing revenue and reducing expenditure.

However, the known world has been largely explored, and a great war has just ended. Not to mention the Old World, even the New World is inhabited by a bunch of poor guys, so it is indeed a bit difficult to open source.

However, cost-cutting is still possible. Reduce government departments, improve labor relations, and let local capitalists behave themselves. They should choose to upgrade the machines rather than exploit workers, and then raise wages and worker benefits.

Furthermore, the approach to the colonies shifted from exploiting resources to sustainable development. Even if we don't talk about universal education, at least we ensured that the colonists received more wages.

In this way, both workers and colonists will have money to spend. With spending comes demand, which in turn stimulates production, and the economic chain will start turning again.

Faced with Joe's proposal, not only His Majesty George, but also the heads of the Overseas Intelligence Service and the Home Intelligence Service, as well as the Prime Minister and ministers, stared wide-eyed at Joe as if he were some kind of monster. For a moment, the conference room fell into an eerie silence.

Faced with the shocked looks of these people, Joe panicked for a moment, so he took out his pocket watch, opened the cover, and looked at his face.

His face was clean, there were no food scraps on his front teeth, and he was still incredibly handsome. There's nothing wrong with that.

After realizing that it wasn't his fault, Joe looked at the people who were looking at him strangely and wondered why they were looking at him like that. He thought that what he had just said was not wrong. He thought that if he could live, he could also let others live. His business philosophy was not wrong.

So Joe nudged his old acquaintance next to him with his elbow. Winston, who had stepped down as Minister of Munitions and was also serving as Minister of the Army and Air Force, had stepped down.

"What's wrong? Is there something wrong with what I said?"

Winston looked at Joe with a strange expression and asked in a low voice.

"Have you been reading any strange books lately, or has someone said something to you?"

"No."

Joe looked at the people around him and scratched his head.

"I don't have time lately. Since the movie was released, Rollo Company's orders have been overflowing. In addition, the BBC is preparing to open branches in Citibank and the Old World, and I'm already too busy with Eastern affairs. I don't have time to read books. As for what anyone said to me, how could that be?"

Looking into Joe's clear eyes, Winston was somewhat puzzled.

"Then why would you make such a suggestion?"

"Because that's what I've always done. Ever since I started my own factory, I've always treated my workers the best in the industry."

At this point, Joe sighed.

"You have no idea how tough it is for factory workers. After finishing work each day, they don't even have the energy to eat, let alone do anything else. They barely manage to eat, take a nap, and then it's back to work. They don't get any rest at all. I used to be a factory worker myself, and I think people can't live like that..."

Upon hearing Joe's words, Winston and the others showed a sense of relief in their eyes.

"So that's why you said that."

"Why not?"

Joe glanced around with a strange look in his eyes.

"Aside from business competition and war, my principle is to ensure my own survival and the survival of others. After all, money can never be earned enough, and the investment in workers has yielded results. My factory's production efficiency is much higher than other factories, and the machine upgrades are the fastest, all thanks to those hardworking workers..."

Hearing Joe praise his workers' diligence, a hint of doubt appeared in the eyes of these gentlemen.

After all, whether in reports or in their own factories, their impression of the workers is that they are greedy and lazy, and as long as the supervisors are not watching them, these workers will seize every opportunity to slack off.

However, Joe's statement was still a bit too alarming; it was practically the kind of thing leftists were doing.

Although Steve Jobs has proven his loyalty time and again, such left-wing remarks are still a bit too alarming for men.

After exchanging a glance with the Prime Minister, His Majesty George said to Joe, "Thank you for your suggestion. It's very valuable, and we will study it carefully. Don't you have many things to do? You can go and attend to your own business now."

Although he found the looks from the people in the meeting room a bit strange, His Majesty George was right; Joe did indeed have a lot to do right now.

With the release of "Kingsman," Rolls-Royce unsurprisingly made a huge profit at the box office, and the company received a large number of orders for the Indomitable SUV.

Everything related to the movie, whether in the New World or the Old World, started selling like hotcakes.

At the same time, although the People's Revolutionary Alliance won the bloody Battle of Tsaritsyn, the eastern front temporarily calmed down as both sides suffered heavy losses.

With the arrival of military auditors from Buntania and Gaul, Buntania resumed its aid to the Lucia military government, and construction began on a long defensive line from Vinicza to Dnipro.

The real reason that brought the civil war to a halt was that, after two years of bloody fighting, a large number of laborers left the countryside to join the army, and numerous military operations nearly destroyed the agricultural areas of Lucia.

Neither side in the civil war has enough food for military operations, so they have had to stop launching large-scale military operations.

At this point, the threat posed by the left wing has been effectively confined within the cage prepared for them by the East.

However, outside this cage, the Teutonic Left Wing, which occupied East Teutonic Castle and controlled Upper Silesia during the civil war, is something that deserves our attention.

These established the overseas enclaves of Tojoton, or the People's Revolutionary Union.

Joe's feelings were very complicated, because the Teutonic Left's victory was entirely a geopolitical issue.

At the Peace of Versailles, in order to satisfy Poland's need for a sea outlet, the three leaders ceded Danze, which belonged to Teutonic Germany, to Poland, thus separating Upper Silesia from the Teutonic mainland.

This wouldn't have been a big problem, since the Teutons had taken more than just this one piece of land from the peace conference, and separating the traditional heartland of the Teutons from their homeland also aligned with the idea of ​​weakening the Teutons.

But that's where the problem lies.

The Teutonic Left Wing was originally no match for the Teutonic Right Wing, especially in the first Battle of Tsaritsyn, where the Teutonic Left Wing sent a considerable number of troops to support the battle.

However, as road transport was cut off, the Teutonic Free Legion on the right wing began to receive fewer supplies. At the same time, after discovering that they could not obtain Upper Silesia, Poland felt that since Upper Silesia did not belong to them, it should not belong to the Teutons either.

So they began to provide some assistance to the Teutonic left.

As a result, although Joe blocked the People's Revolutionary Alliance in the east, he was not able to completely block it.

This situation, where the blockage is not completely blocked, further complicates the already complex geopolitical environment.

Because today Poland dares to aid the Teutonic left wing of the People's Revolutionary League in order to harm the Teutons, I dare not imagine what they might do tomorrow.

Therefore, in order to prevent NATO from being attacked by a group of forces once Poland turns left, Joe must accelerate the modernization and professionalization of Wagner and NATO forces.

To accomplish this, Joe needs to develop a lot of new equipment.

So Joe is currently in a state where there are no major issues, but minor issues keep arising.

Now that His Majesty has indicated that he can leave, Qiao, who had only taken time out of his busy schedule to enter the palace, naturally did not hesitate to get up and bid farewell to everyone in the conference room.

Just before Joe was about to leave, His Majesty George called him back. "I saw the movie, it was very good. When will the sequel be made?"

Faced with this direct urging to update the chapter, Qiao was at a loss for words.

He could only nod to indicate, "I'm preparing, I'm preparing. We can start filming as soon as I finish writing the script."

Upon hearing Joe say that preparations for the second installment had already begun, His Majesty George nodded in satisfaction and then continued, "Is it a continuation of Kingsman?"

Upon hearing this, Joe immediately felt Sir Cumming's burning gaze upon him.

Thinking of the promise he had made to Sir Cumming not long ago, Joe quickly said, "Kingsman is not good for our intelligence agencies' image, so the main characters later will be agents from the domestic intelligence agency or the foreign intelligence agency."

His Majesty George's eyes flickered for a moment upon hearing this, then he waved his hand and said, "These kinds of details are easy to handle. From now on, agents of both the domestic and foreign intelligence agencies will all be Kingsman."

Since His Majesty George had said so, Joe, who was inwardly sighing that power could be so capricious, could only nod and say, "I understand. I will continue this series."

After Joe left, a brief but heated discussion immediately broke out in the conference room.

Although most of the people in the meeting room had seen "Kingsman" and thought the movie was well-made, their discussion here naturally wouldn't focus on the film.

The question is, what exactly is the leftist ideology that Joe just displayed?

While believing in Joe's loyalty, for Brittania, if Joe really turned left, things would be truly terrible.

Joe not only controlled the Baltic Sea, but also had an elite strike force. In other words, Joe did not have a navy; otherwise, this force would have been fully capable of marching on London.

However, His Majesty George ultimately called a halt to the discussion.

His Majesty George stated that although Old Joe did not live a particularly extravagant life, the size of his guard alone was not something a leftist would do. Moreover, his working-class background made him sympathetic to workers and it was quite normal for him to be close to the working class.

Moreover, even if we assume Joe is a leftist, he certainly wouldn't have taken the initiative to suppress the leftists in Prag, establish a right-wing government in Prag, and build a Baltic blockade.

So everyone is overthinking this matter. There's no need to doubt Joe. Just don't call Joe in future economic matters.

Having left Buckingham Palace, Joe was unaware that his political future had just teetered precariously on the edge of a cliff.

Even if she knew, Qiao wouldn't care much.

As orders from the United States of America poured in like snowflakes, both Joe and Rolls-Royce discovered something.

That is, although Rolls-Royce now has a large amount of production capacity available for vehicle production due to the cancellation of Air Force orders.

Meanwhile, although many colonies placed orders for six-wheeled trucks with Rolls-Royce through Winston's introduction, the orders were small because they were experimental, leaving Rolls-Royce with a lot of spare capacity.

However, with the United States of America placing a massive order, Rolls-Royce's production capacity was clearly insufficient, or rather, far too insufficient.

Faced with a situation where there are plenty of orders but insufficient production capacity, a qualified capitalist would naturally not let the money slip by.

This raises a problem: if production capacity is to be expanded, a new factory needs to be built, but where should this factory be built?

As one of Rolls-Royce's shareholders, Joe naturally had a say on this issue.

So Joe proposed a very bold plan.

So if you're going to build new factories, why not build more?
Prag has a history of numerous metal deposits, and after the formation of NATO, exploration teams from London discovered many new mineral deposits, which are now being mined.

So why not set up processing plants for some minor parts in Prag to reduce shipping costs?
After all, it's obvious to anyone which is more worthwhile to transport: a ton of ore or a ton of spare parts.

Then, the final assembly plant will be built in Citibank. This will not only reduce import tariffs on cars, but also make Citibank employees think that these are Citibank cars made in Citibank.

A Citizen owns a Citizen car, if you don't buy one, are you still a Citizen?

Moreover, having an assembly plant at Citibank would make vehicle maintenance much more convenient.

The Indomitable's performance is excellent, but this comes at the cost of a high rate of parts wear and tear. If after-sales service isn't improved, the Indomitable's reputation will explode, and the mothers of Rolls-Royce's board of directors will be launched into lunar orbit by those consumers.

Besides economic considerations, Joe had another ulterior motive for deciding to open the factory in Citibank.

That is because there are many pregnant women now, so how to treat them all equally in the future has become a big problem.

Diane and Kate are relatively easy to deal with, since they have two noble titles in their families, so things are relatively straightforward. However, what about Catherine and the others' children? That's a much more complicated issue.

Britannia is only so big; who knows what problems might arise if we stay here.

So Joe planned to have them give birth in Citizenship and obtain Citizenship, which would also qualify them for election since they would be born in Citizenship.

This final assembly plant serves both as a stepping stone for them and as a way to avoid the chaos at home that feels like a world war when they get old.

You two are separated by an ocean, how can you still have an argument?

A group of people are in Citibank, and a group of people are in Bontania. How could that possibly lead to conflict? That's impossible...

Rolls-Royce naturally welcomed Joe's suggestion, which, while somewhat self-serving, could indeed generate profits, even though this decentralized plant approach would reduce some local jobs.

However, Rolls-Royce shareholders could earn even more through this method, so Joe's proposal was naturally approved.

So now we are starting preliminary preparations for establishing branch factories in Plug and Citibank.

After leaving Buckingham Palace, Joe prepared to negotiate with the Americans on establishing a BBC branch in the United States and building a car factory. He was even prepared to personally travel to the United States if necessary.

Just as Joe was preparing to go to Citibank.

With tears welling up in his eyes, Lieutenant Schmidt was packing his bags, preparing to leave the New World.

Schmidt, who had come to Citibank with several thousand pounds in cash, thought this new continent was quite nice.

Because of the large number of Teutonic immigrants in the past, Lieutenant Schmidt can not only find the taste of home in Citizens, but in some places he can even speak his native tongue.

The biggest problem was that when someone discovered he was a Teuton, or even a Teutonic officer, they would jokingly say to Schmidt, "Looks like we beat you badly, we've driven you all the way to this side of the ocean."

After witnessing the half-hearted performances of the Wagner veterans on set, Lieutenant Schmidt remained unfazed by this level of mockery. "I have no armor, I have no weaknesses. Talk all you want, I'll admit defeat if I even acknowledge you."

The immigrants who arrived earlier than Schmidt, out of respect for these soldiers who fought for their country, did a lot of favors for him. Even Schmidt's landlord, an elderly man who had also served in the war, rented him an apartment at a very low price.

They also wanted to introduce Schmidt to a job at the police station, which he almost succeeded in if it weren't for Schmidt's disastrously poor Bunitalian language.

Even late at night, when he was embracing a hot woman he met in a bar, Schmidt would sigh and think that if those people hadn't gone too far, making movies would have been a really good job.

At least in the past, Lieutenant Schmidt's salary was clearly insufficient to allow him to have a relationship beyond friendship with a woman of that caliber.

Then Kingsman was released.

Lieutenant Schmidt, who knew nothing about the movie "Kingsman", thought it was just so-so. He was just playing a role, so what big deal could happen?
At most, I'll just keep a low profile for a while.

However, Lieutenant Schmidt, who had spent his entire life in Teutonic, was clearly unaware that Citizen journalists were willing to risk being killed to take photos in Verdun, Paris, and the Somme in order to get news.

Even if the savior himself appeared before them, the first thing they would do would be to take a picture of the savior and then ask him how it felt to have nails hammered into his hands.

And matching these reporters are the same idle people that bars never lack, who are willing to betray their drinking buddies for five dollars.

Thus began Lieutenant Schmidt's painful life with the release of "Kingsman".

As those idle reporters began announcing in the newspapers that "the insidious Colonel Schmidt has arrived in New York," Lieutenant Schmidt found himself instantly famous.

In this day and age, becoming a movie star is definitely a good thing.

With fame comes box office appeal, and with box office appeal comes the ability to become a top star in the film industry.

For those top earners, a weekly wage of £1000 is just the starting point, and £7500 is not out of reach.

However, the name that Lieutenant Schmidt came up with was slightly off.

Because his performance in the film was so good, anyone who watched it would think that he was a mad dog-like, cruel and cold-blooded Teutonic Colonel.

As a result, Lieutenant Schmidt not only attracted attention wherever he went, but some idle people would even angrily curse him as a cruel scumbag.

What pained Lieutenant Schmidt even more was that because he acted so well, and the colonel's character was so crazy, his fellow Teutonics believed that Schmidt was smearing the Teutonics by playing the role.

Even his landlord, who had helped him a lot in the past, now wanted to kick out Schmidt, the traitor who had betrayed the Teutonic School.

Having experienced a dramatic reversal from heaven to hell overnight, Lieutenant Schmidt could only lament, "I was so stupid, really. I only knew that making movies could make money; I didn't know that making movies would ruin my reputation."

Then, just as Lieutenant Schmidt was packing his things with tears in his eyes, preparing to return to the Old World, or even just to the Teutonic Kingdom, a film producer knocked on Lieutenant Schmidt's door, saying that they had a film that needed someone like him.

This time, Lieutenant Schmidt, having learned his lesson, said, "Tell me first what role you want me to play?"
The producer chuckled and said that what they needed for you to act in wasn't difficult; it was just to play the role of a Teutonic Colonel again, and you could just play yourself.

Upon hearing that he was to play another mad Teutonic officer, Schmidt shook his head vigorously, as if to say, "What a joke!"

I almost got expelled from humanity after playing this kind of role only once. If I played it again, I would become an enemy of humanity. No, no, absolutely no!

Faced with Lieutenant Schmidt shaking his head frantically, the producer said, "Don't panic and refuse. We can offer you a weekly salary of 300 pounds!"

For Schmidt, who had previously earned £500, £300 a week was simply not enough.

So Schmidt didn’t hesitate to kick the producer out of the room, and then, after packing his things, on a dark and stormy night, a night for murder and arson, he took his luggage to the docks and went back to the Old World!
What Schmidt didn't know was that, although the Black Teutonic was quite dark in the movie "Kingsman".

But it depends on your perspective. From the Teutonic perspective, was it wrong for me to arrest spies? Was it wrong for me to suppress resistance forces? These were all justifiable acts of war!

The only problem with this movie is that the Teutonic Colonel was just too stupid!

Damn it! You've already captured the person, yet you devise a series of strange, slow methods to kill Agent 880. Where's your brain?

And how did you raise your daughter? How could you raise such a traitor?!

Look! The reason we lost is because there were too many traitors like the colonel's daughter in our rear!

At the same time, because Kingsman was indeed among the best in its time in terms of filming quality, even veterans who had been through the trenches felt that the performances were "so realistic, so well made, that's how we fought back then!"

So while Kingsman achieved good box office results in Teutonic, it also had a small impact.

For a period of time, the officer's daughter was looked at with strange eyes.

Aside from that, Kingsman also had a minor impact.

That is, after the Teutons reviewed the lessons learned from the Low Countries being exposed by Joe, and after watching the movie "Kingsman", they felt that our past use of commandos was too conservative. The intelligence department paired with commandos would be so much more comfortable and powerful!

However, as a defeated nation, almost all of the Teutonic forces were under the surveillance of the Bunitas and Gauls, making it extremely difficult to form special commando units.

Since the disarmament began, the Teutons have been pondering how to circumvent treaty restrictions and maintain their officer corps to sustain their armed forces under the watchful eyes of the Bunitanias and Gauls.

The need to form a special commando unit has given the Teutons another reason.

The only problem is where they will train.

(End of this chapter)