NATURAL RESOURCES LITTLE. 22? 
One may add that it has also taught that no country is wholly self- 
contained as regards the materials essential to successful military 
operations. It must keep the seas open for the transport of supplies 
from other countries, as, conspicuously in our own case, rubber, tin, 
manganese, graphite, platinum, wool, and knitting needles. 
It is in this connection instructive to consider briefly the position 
of Germany as to natural resources at the beginning of the war and 
the part which natural resources played in respect of Germany's in- 
centives, aids, and inhibitions. These and other interesting relation- 
ships are admirably presented in The Strategy of Minerals, pre- 
pared by members of the Geological Survey, to whom I am indebted 
for the statistics which follow concerning mineral supplies. 
The greatest body of iron ore in Europe was shared by France, 
Germany, and Luxemburg. France was most favorably placed as to 
actual reserves, but Germany had the advantage in mining costs. 
France has no adequate supply of coking coal, while Germany has a 
great supply of the best coal of this type in Europe. Even now 
that the Lorraine ores and the Saar Basin coal have passed under 
French control the position of Germany is not irreparably bad since 
ore commonly and naturally goes to coal. 
These minette iron ores of eastern France were coveted by Ger- 
many, and had Germany in 1871 held Belfort and Verdun she 
would have had in her possession the whole iron-ore reserves of the 
Moselle Basin, and such possession would at least have removed a 
great incentive to war and might well have made her invincible had 
she gone to war. 
In 1913 Germany produced a little more iron than France, Bel- 
gium, and the United Kingdom together. All four countries pro- 
duced 48 per cent of the world's output, to which the United States 
contributed 40 per cent in 1913, and in 1916 a little over 50 per cent. 
In 1913 three-fourths of the German ore mined in Germany proper 
came from annexed Lorraine, and four-fifths of all the ore produced 
within the German Zollverein came from Lorraine and Luxemburg. 
At the onset of the war Germanj^ obviously aimed to cripple 
France by crippling the French iron industrj^, and her early control 
of the coal and iron of Belgium and northern France proved of the 
utmost advantage to her and did much to prolong the war. 
Nine-tenths of the iron ores mined in France came from the closely 
contiguous districts of Longwy, Briey, and Nanc3^ Germany, there- 
fore, at once invaded the Briey district and the Longwy district im- 
mediately thereafter. As a consequence, Germany in September, 
1914, held respectively, 68, 83, 80, and 75 per cent of France's ca- 
pacity for producing coal, iron ores, pig iron, and steel and was in 
complete control of the coal-mining and iron-making industries of 
Belgium. 
