THE COLONIST. WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 13, 1918. THE ALLIES' ECONOMIC WEAPON.

Colonist, Volume LX, Issue 14635, 13 February 1918, Page 11

THE COLONIST. WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 13, 1918. THE ALLIES' ECONOMIC WEAPON.

The Hamburg merchants who comprise for the greater part the "German Union of South Sea Firms," are feeling jv&tly apprehensive for the future of the lucrative trade they had built up m the Pacific before the war. Their recent, memorandum to the Reichstag insisting upon the vital recessity to Germany of regaining possession of her colonies betrays their realisation of the tremendous economic disaster; the war has brought upon Germany, a disaster which the return of the color nies would go but a very small way to-! wards making good. At the present moment her' overseas commerce is annihilated, her domestic industries are paralysed, and she. has Hot a square : pot of colonial territory remaining to | her. However long the Hun may be (able to prolong his military resistance, decisive victory is now beyond his power, and beyond the military sceue looms the darkest economic prospect which ever faced ary nation, a prospect which grows darker with every month of the war's prolongation. So says Mr J. Saxon in the London "Daily Chronicle," and with his view there can be no dispute. The Allies have in their power of industrial and commercial pressure a weapon of crushing and shattering effect. The extert to which Germany lad pushed her "peaceful penetration," laid her hands on the resources' of other nations and empires, and become, dependent on foreign supplies, measures the effect of this weapon when the time comes for its decisive use. Think of those tentacles which Germary lad cast over the supply of many essential metals within the British Empire—especially tho zinc and tungsten ores of Australia. Every year half a million tons of zinc concentrates went in German ships, and mainly to Germany, from British Australia, Erglaud being content with a niggardly dole of 20,000 tons. Of the precioustungsten ores, wolfram and scheelite, more than half tte amount imported into Germany is now at an end, and Germary will have to look elsewhere for her supplies of these materials, and alternative sources, with three-quarters, of the. world leagued against her, may not be too plentiful. But these. are only the most familiar examples. Not to mention the resources of our Allies, the closing of .the British Empire alone to the German importer and manufacturer woild mean a crushing economic blow. That Empire has a practical monopoly of many ir dispensable raw materials. Canada produces by far the greater part of the world supply of nickel, cobalt, asbestos, and, with British India, of mica. New Zealand has a monopoly of kauri gum and ptormium fibre. India is the sole producer of jute. The British West African colonies yield the greater portion of the world's supply of palm nuts and palm kernels, which have a rapidly growing industrial utility. If America were to stard in with the other Allies in declining to supply Germany with raw materials until the Allied war aims were secured, the German cotton industry would, have to put the shutters up, for the Allied Powers control the entire world-*xpply of cotton fibre. It! may, perhaps, be thought that the alternative supplies of wool are so many that the closing of the British Empire j to Germany might not seriously affect her. But consider merino wool. If 1913 Germany imported 245 million pounds of this article, of which 197 million pounds came from the British Empire. If this' source of supply were denied her, Germany would have to turn, to Argentina and Uruguay, from which countries, however, the total supply of merino wool before the war was only .170 million pounds per arnum, and a vast deal of that would, of course, go to other competitors. The analysis might be continued much firther. Germany imported from British India so many hides and skins that it became a common remark that England was "running India for the benefit of Germany." In the year 1913 Germany drew nearly 18 million pounds' worth of materials from British India.. Germany.has, indeed, had the free run of the whole of England's vast tropical domains, and the extert of that benefit she will not realise until she loses it. From what has been said, some idea may be.gathered of the extent of Germany's dependence upon the British world and of the leverage which this affords to the British Empire if Germany were to prove recalcitrant when the peace negotiations set in. But England does not stand alone. Each of her many Allies can contribute in varying degree to the same economic pressure. To take two more examples, the Allies together could deprive Germany of five-sixth of her copper and nearly all her rice. This aggregate power of the Allies places the ultimate issue of the war beyond question.