Have we as Americans realized these forces? Absolutely not, I should say. How many realize that the Alsace-Lorraine question is and was not a sentimental one, but a struggle for the greatest iron deposits of Europe and the second largest in the world, which gave Germany her immense growth and power, and may now transfer that wealth and power to France? That the dispute between Poland and Germany as to Upper Silesia is not a question of nationality, sentiment, or even territory, but concerns the greatest coal field of Europe as well as great deposits of lead and zinc? If Poland gets this, she may rival Germany in wealth and importance; if Germany loses it, she may drop into the position of a second-rate power, now that she has also had to give up Alsace-Lorraine. To submit such a question to the vote of the native population is of the same order of fitness as tossing a coin for it; but how many of us have understood this? Population shifts and changes, swells or shrinks, may be at one time predominantly Polish and at another time mainly German; but the coal deposits are fixed. To clarify these things we should in place of Silesia say Coal, in the place of Alsace-Lorraine, Iron, and so on. The reason we have not realized these facts is on account of our own vast mineral wealth, so abundant that not till recently has American capital and enterprise found it necessary to adventure into the outside world, as the European nations had long ago done. Their natural wealth was limited so that they have become familiar with those fundamental principles and laws of which we have been unconscious. From this has arisen European foreign policies, the protection of their national commerce and national capital in foreign enterprises and consequently at home; governmental participation in business combinations, as in Germany, England, France, and Italy; while the United States has been engaged in “trust-busting” and has neglected the protection of its investors in foreign countries. This illustrates the difference between European diplomacy and American guilelessness. How well this played into the hands of foreign powers it is unnecessary to explain. The spectacle of the United States maintaining a Monroe Doctrine of protection over Latin-American republics which she took no vigorous steps to unite with her by the powerful bonds of commerce, must well have excited the amusement of those European commercial nations like Germany who have been strengthening themselves in those countries by the closest commercial, and hence political, ties. This volume simply takes up the study of the actual situation, as to the distribution and ownership of mineral supplies in the world, and the author of each chapter is a well-known specialist.