THE SAAR VALLEY.

Colonist, Volume LXI, Issue 1, 12 April 1919, Page 7

THE SAAR VALLEY.

ITS MINERAL WEALTH.

FRENCH TRADITIONS.

(H. Warner Allen, in the "Morning . . Post.")

Tlie Safir valley was included by,the Treaty of Paris in 1814 in French Lorraine, but after the Hundred Days it was handed over to Prussia by the sec^ ond Treaty of Paris in 1815. * Prussia was already pursuing that policy of economic greed which led half a century later to the crime of, 1870 and culminated in the war of 1914. At the beginning of the nineteenth century the , value of the Saar cdal mines was begin- I ning^ to be realised. The presence of ' coalin the rogion-was known as far back as the sixteenth century, and in the eighteenth century the inhabitants went with a pickaxe to dig out such coal as they needed for domestic purposes from. the points where ciie coal fields were; nearest thp surface. The Prince of Nassau-Sarrebruck, whose estates were' practically surrounded by French terri-' tory, nationalised the coal mines, or,! ' rather, took them for himself. The' i French Government under Napoleon I.' | undertook a methodical survey of the basin, which was carried out by the French engineers of the Ecole dcs Mines. | Their efforts were closely watched by the ironmasters at Westphalia, who were anxious to put an1* end to the competition which they had to face at' the hands of the French metallurgists and who afterwards saw in the Treaty of 1815 ,aii excellent , chance of depriving France/of her supply of coal in that region. A certain Boecking provided the Prussian diplomats with the necessary economic information and despite the violent protests of the population ,the valley of the Saar was torn away from France.

- OF PLUNDER. | In 1870 Gerraanyj with the Saar coal-' fields in her hands, decided to rob France of the mineral wealth contained m Lorraine. At that "moment the full value of that wealth was not understood and the Germans had no idea that the great iron deposits which they were an-i nexing cropped out again beyond the1 new; frontier in the Briey region. Even as it was, though the Briey basin possessed deposits richer than those of annexed Lorraine, the Germans had a great advantage m their control of the coal supply of the region. In 1913 France consumed nearly 65 million tons ot coal of which 25 million tons were imported. , Yet, despite this very considerable. importation, France was unable to work nearly half her production JLST'S 1"8^ 0?* of nea«y 29 million tons produced she was compelled to export nearly nine million "tons, of which about four million tons were exported to Germany, and the rest to Begium Ihe recovery tf the mineral resources of Lorraine wuJ double the French oroduction oi ore, and, unless there is some moreror less commensurate increase in I the French coal supply, France will still' be to a great extent at the mercy of the! SSSf nf°^lo^? erß- If one takes the £ fr« # f% De P T ai' tment of Meurthe-et-Moselle before the war, one finds that SE C°nf !?L c-d °Ver iom million to»s or I coke. Of this quantity 2,400,000 tons! .jjfere imported from Germany on the most onerous conditions. The com petmg metallurgists controlled the coal mines, and they were careful to see that the French forges paid an exorbitant , price for the coal, without which they could do nothing, to say nothing of the heavy transport charges. The Saar basm ,if it becomes French, will & least compensate to a certain extent for the French handicap in the matter of coal, though this arrangement would still leave immense riches in the hands of the coalowners of Westphalia

COKE PRODUCTION. I - The Saar Valley produces coal of • rather inferior quality, it can be used I tor domestic purposes arid'for the manu-facture-of gas, but it is less-valuable for j the production of coke, and therefore less- serviceable to the metallurgist None the less the Saar field produces about; one half of the four and a half1 miLion .tons of,coke required by the! forges of the Saar itself and of annexed; Lorraine. With the exception of two' private-owned mines all the coalfields of1 the baar are the property of the Prussian Government, so that they are peculiarly adapted to form a part of the indemnity the Allies will impose on Ger-mailJ-Jn 1815 the- French Government, though it had surveyed the region had given no concessions to private terms, and Prussia, on taking over all * the work accomplished by the French' engineers, decided to keep the mines as national property. p Since 1905 these mines have broueht m a yearly revenue of 11 000,000 marks, t and that although there has been no intensive production, as the Prussian Government was unwilling to enter into competition with the Wettphalian (Si owners. The district is to-day extremely prosperous. There is no sign of shortage of the necessaries of life, and prices are much lower than those prevailing m Lorraine. At Sarrebruck T was informed that the population was hvmg on its stocks, and that after a month there would be. nothing left to toZn In 11 th 4 P, meantime the inhabitants Se^utSe WolTied a^out

SOME STATISTICS. „, The following statistics concerning the Saar Valley illustrate its industrial importance. Its coalfields have an area of about 380,000 acres, being rather larger than those of the Nord and Pas-Se-Uilais Their communications are assured by.two main railway lines, one running. east and west from Mets to Mannheim, via Sarrebnick:. the other" nor oh and south from Treves to Sarrebourg, also-passing through Sarrebruck I Ihe transport of coal is further facilifatea by a remarkable canal system which is linked up with the MarneRhine canal. The mosf valuable mines1 are found m the neighbourhood of Sarrebruck. & In 1913 seventeen million tons were extracted from eighty mines, of which sixty in the Rhenish province were responsible for twelve-and a half million tons, while the mines left in LorQao£r e» JM 6 1915 frontier only produced OjCvKJjUUO tons. i