British Secret Service During the Great WarEveritt, Nicholas
History
British Secret Service During the Great War
Everitt, Nicholas
Secret service -- Great Britain; World War, 1914-1918 -- Secret service -- Great Britain
Other statistics follow, such as cotton-seed, meal and cake, etc.,
proving beyond all shadow of doubt that neutral countries were importing
far more goods and foodstuffs, etc, than their usual average imports
plus the total previous imports of Germany in addition.
A careful analysis of the leading American exports showed, almost
without an exception, the striking fact that the prices of peace exports
were very much lower in 1915 than in 1913; whilst the prices of war
exports all showed large and heavy advances.
Deducing from these figures, leader-writers came to the obvious
conclusion that _Germany was enjoying unrestricted imports for which
Great Britain directly or indirectly paid_.
Returns from other parts of the world merely corroborated, adding proof
upon proof. By way of example the Brazilian official trade returns
during the first nine months of 1913, compared with 1915, show the
following exports to the countries named:
1913. 1915.
£ £
Sweden 389,475 2,844,787
Norway 63,562 594,900
Denmark 105,637 715,387
In addition to the export figures given and those quoted from the U.S.A.
should be added the enormous quantities of corn, etc, re-exported from
Liverpool and other British ports under special license issued by our
Government.
It is therefore reasonably arguable that _our Government has used our
Fleet to convoy our Merchantmen in freighting foodstuffs, at our
expense, to feed the Germans_. By this incomprehensible tolerance home
prices of food in the United Kingdom were directly raised to a high
figure and neutral countries were directly helped to pile up fortunes by
_bleeding and pinching our own peoples in order to feed their enemies_.
On January 21st, 1916, in the House of Commons Major Rowland Hunt asked
the Foreign Secretary "whether the Foreign Office had been aware of the
state of things demonstrated by the American trade statistics and if so
could he say how much longer our Navy was to be crippled by the Foreign
Office, the war prolonged, and many more thousands of our men
sacrificed?"
Sir E. Grey: "I understand that the subject is to be discussed next
week. I must, however, say that the statements in the question are
grossly unfair and entirely misrepresent the facts of the case. I
reserve any further statement I have to make until next week."
From December 16th to 30th, 1915, just on 25,000 tons of iron ore were
openly _consigned to Germany_ through Rotterdam and Holland; as to which
see further on.
Here is a sample report of the sales one day at Esbjerg (Denmark) cattle
market, December, 1915:
"Cattle sold to-day numbered 1,450 head, of which Street, of Hamburg,
bought 141; Dar Neilsen, of Kiel, 330; Franck of Berlin, 440; an
Austrian buyer, 327."
This leaves 212 for Danish buyers. No wonder best beef was then half a
crown a pound in Denmark!
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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