MINERALS SHAPE HISTORY

Otago Daily Times, Issue 23542, 4 July 1938, Page 12

MINERALS SHAPE HISTORY

A good deal of modern history might be expressed in terms of minerals, and civilisation could not have reached its present high level without a constant and almost unlimited supply, said Dr C. B. Gingston, in his presidential address to the British Institution of Mining and Metallurgy. No country, however anxious to become self-con-tained, could escape its dependence on others for a supply of the minerals it lacked. The British Empire and the United States of America were richer than others in mineral resources, but they were by no means self-contained. The dominance of the people living about the North Atlantic had been attributed in part to the virility of the northern people, but in great measure it had been due to their control of abundant supplies of minerals. It was interesting to note that the two nations that had intervened in the internal struggle in Spain were those that had most to gain by establishing a claim to compensation that might be liquidated in terms of iron ore and copper. Japan’s attack on China could hardly be dissociated from the determination to secure control of great deposits of high-grade coal to be used in the development of the mineral resources of Manchuria and Korea, and as a basis for extending her commercial influence in the Pacific.