Abstract
DURING the past year there have been continual references in the German technical Press and in the papers read before various technical societies to the immense importance of the Briey and Longwy iron-ore basins for German industry both during and after the war. Gradually the mask is being dropped in technical circles, where the facts are, of course, well known, and the hollow pretence that this war was a war of self-defence on the part of Germany is barely referred to, for these circles at any rate know that it is a war of aggression and spoliation. In February last Or. M. Schlenker, Syndic of the Saarbriicken Chamber of Commerce, showed that the extraction of iron ore in the Briey basin amounted (calculated by iron contents) to 28 per cent, of the total German ore supply, this latter being made up as to 56 per cent, of domestic production and as to 44 per cent, of imported iron ore. He said that it must be described as a special stroke of good fortune that at the very commencement of the war Germany came into possession of the Briey ore basin, as without the French iron ores it would have been impossible for the German iron industry to cover its enormous requirements of munitions; on the other hand, France has lost, as the result of the operations of the war, 85 per cent, of its pre-war iron output. Dr. Schlenker takes for granted that Germany will retain possession of its spoil and thus remain “simply invulnerable in its most important sources of strength and power.”
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L., H. Germany and Iron-Ore Supplies. Nature 100, 447 (1918). https://doi.org/10.1038/100447a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/100447a0