"Even if Hindenburg's genius and German bravery won a complete victory on land, even if the English Army fell into our hands to the last man, and France was disarmed and had to submit to Germany's terms, even then England and America could not be compelled to the capitulation that the Pan-German word-heroes prophesy daily. Even then they would blockade our coasts and the war would continue at sea. And even if they could not or would not do that, even if peace was concluded and all the battles ended, they would still have a terrible weapon to use against us. Our domestic economy can not exist permanently without the wheat, the copper, and the cotton from America, the nickel from Canada, the cotton from Egypt and India, the phosphates from the North African coasts, the rubber from the English tropical colonies, Indian jute, and the oilplants of the South Sea Islands. "There will be a scarcity of all these things after the war and there will be great competition for them. If England and America do not deliver to us these raw materials after the war, then we as conquerors are conquered." GERMANY'S POTASH BOYCOTT Before we entered the war Germany viewed with great concern the effect of the economic weight of the United States if added to the side of her antagonists. She felt that if this country remained neutral she could depend on us for raw materials. To be sure, German ingenuity had produced ten thousand substitutes, due to the skill of German chemists, ranging from bacteria fats to synthetic rubber. But even the War Office in Berlin was under no illusion on this point. "We need copper and no stripping of palace roofs, no raiding of door knockers or kitchen pans can make up for the deficiency." Even the vision of economic self-sufficiency in Central Europe had rifts in it. Raw material was so important that, in the boot and shoe industry 1,400 factories in the German Empire were amalgamated into 300. In the silk industry the spools were reduced from 45,000 to 2,500. Out of 1,700 spinning and weaving mills, only 70 were running at high pressure. The plan, as outlined by German experts, to force the United States to supply raw material was to cut off potash exports and certain manufactured goods. "If America will sell us no cotton," was the threat of the Berlin _Deutsche-Zeitung_, "she shall get no potash--the indispensable fertilizer in which we have a world monopoly. If she withholds her oil and grain, then she shall get no _dyes_, no drugs, no glassware or optical instruments." But as a writer in the London _Outlook_ stated, this threat could not be made an effective instrument of trade control: