At the outbreak of this war Germany had an annual production of twenty-eight millions tons of iron, of which seven million came from Germany and twenty-one million came from Alsace-Lorraine, which Germany stole from France in 1870. France had twenty-two million tons of iron a year, of which fifteen came from the basin of Briey, in Northeastern France. The first rush of Germany carried her over the coal fields of Belgium, over Luxemburg, over the mines of the Briey Basin and put her in possession of practically all the foundries and steel mills that France possessed. When Germany settled down to trench warfare she had an annual production of forty-nine million tons of iron, seven million from Germany, twenty-one from Lorraine, six from Luxemburg and fifteen from the occupied districts of France, while France had only seven million left. That is why Germany was so bitter against England when England entered the war; that is why she was so insistent that we should put an embargo on munitions, for if England had not come in and kept the seas open, if we had consented to forbid the shipment of munitions, France must have swiftly fallen through the sheer starvation of her guns, for a nation with seven million tons of iron a year cannot contend with one possessing forty-nine million tons. But stop for a moment to remember, since we are speaking of the shipment of munitions, that Austria herself, the Government of Vienna, sold to the Confederate Government some thousands of stacks of arms during our Civil War, and refused either to forbid the shipment or to resell to the Government in Washington. Germany sold arms to the Boers and to England during the War in South Africa, and when the English blockade made it impossible to continue selling to the Boers she went on selling to England. She sold to Spain during our war with Spain. She has never considered placing an embargo upon her own munition plants when other nations were at war, yet she poured out the vials of her hate upon us for doing what she herself has always done. But now grant that Germany wins this war and that that Great Middle Empire, which already, mark you, is a reality from Lille almost to Bagdad, remains and endures, who is going to control and rule it? Germany has forty-nine million tons of iron a year; Austria has very little iron, Italy has none, neither Roumania, Bulgaria or Serbia have any iron, Turkey has none except in Mesopotamia, which Germany will control. Who then will be the master of that Middle Empire? It will be only Prussia writ large. But Germany's control rests on other foundations still; her General Staff to-day controls the military establishments of all her allies, not a command can be given anywhere without Germany's assent. Moreover the printing presses of Berlin have been busy since the war broke out, stamping out paper money which has been loaned to Austria, Bulgaria and Turkey until these countries are hopelessly entangled in an economic net.