Germany was very lavish with her gold at the start, and the French believed that it was an assistance in her military strategy. At the battle of Charleroi 50,000 German cavalry screened an unsuspected infantry force of 300,000 men and the French had to retreat; but that Maubeuge surrendered 40,000 men, without more fighting, gives rise in the French mind to suspicions of German gold. The anathemas of the French against their commander at Maubeuge make it much safer for him to remain a prisoner in Germany. The French caught one German wearing a French uniform but having upon his person one million francs. Of course, they shot him as a spy, but they were more incensed by the bribes he carried than by his uniform. Everybody in Germany is called upon to lend a hand in maintaining the supply of gold for the government. The patriotism of the people was first appealed to. Then laws were passed. People are "requested" to give up their jewelry, to make a patriotic sacrifice of it for the Fatherland. Cards are printed in the newspapers urging the people for the sake of the Fatherland to bring all their gold into the Reichsbank. So fine is the search for gold that wedding rings are given from the fingers of the women, and iron rings are substituted as badges of patriotism. While every other nation on earth since 1900 has been accumulating gold in bank reserve, England alone has stood aloof and accumulated credit instead of gold. English financiers laugh at gold except as it can be made useful. They prefer to hold interest-bearing promises to pay gold. To-day England holds the keys to the world's gold outside of Germany, and I have a suspicion that she is not averse to American cotton going into Germany if it takes out the gold in return. Germany is young as a banking, trading, and industrial nation. England insists that both men and gold must be at work. In Germany the gold reserve must be maintained and, with foreign trade cut off, men must be idle. In England both the gold and the men are at work. Labor was never better employed in England than to-day. The English policy in this wartime is to fill every idle hand with productive industry; to work the machinery day and night; and to keep the gold in England so far as is necessary and to keep it circulating in England. The national loss begins when you lose either the golden days of labor, the gold of the sunshine that makes the harvest of the valleys or the gold of finance and commerce. When the Germans fought the French in 1870, 60 per cent of her people lived on the land. Now, forty-four years later, she is fighting the whole world, but only 30 per cent of her people live by the fruit of the soil. That is the simple answer as to why Germany, a country besieged, cannot win against the world.