12 
LAND & WATER 
January 4, 1917 
Coal and Iron Fields of Lorraine 
By Henry D. Davray 
IV, up to the present moment, Germany has been 
able to resist the AUies' pressure ; if, after the 
smashing blow she received as early as September, 
i()i4, at the gigantic battle which raged for a fort- 
night from Nancy to the Aisne, she has managed to tight 
on and compelled the Allies to such terrifying sacrifices, 
it is entirely because she could rely on her inexhaustible 
resources in coal and iron. For the last two years, with 
the guns and munitions her workshops produce, and the 
explosives she extracts from her coal, she could make up , 
for the attrition and decrease of her effectives — and was 
able, when the moral of her population abated, to point 
proudly to the map of Europe and show a fighting line 
pushed deep into her neighbours' land, a long line that 
sometimes bends but never breaks, lip to the present. 
Moreover, concurrently with her enormous war effort, 
her industrial power made possible for her the building of 
merchant ships which, as soon as peace is signed, will 
carry all over the world the stock of -goods she has been 
accumulating. She has even been in a position to sell 
coal and iron to her neutral neighbours in exchange for 
food. It has been said o\-er and over again that war is 
Germany's national industry ; we see now that that 
criminal industry has been built upon the iron ore de- 
posits of Lorraine, and that Lorraine's coal and iron 
mines have up to the present saved Germany from bank- 
ruptcy and collapse. 
Wealth of the Rhine Valley 
The mineral wealth of Germany is to be found, for the 
largest part, along the I^hine. Nature has ominously 
hidden at the door of the Prussian Niebelung a treasure 
which is the main spring of (lerman power. Up to 1814 
this treasure belonged to France ; but in 1815 the treaty 
of Vienna permitted Prussia to cross the Rhine, and she 
seized the country between the Rhine and Moselle with 
its enormous masses of mineral wealth. But, though 
she then appropriated the considerable coal deposits of 
the Sarre, she was still lacking in iron ore. Those she got 
in 1871, when she captured that part of Lorraine which 
she thought contained the whole of the industrial wealth 
of these parts. The frontiers she clutched at since then 
gave her the means to develop her industrial power, upon 
which she built up her political hegemony. 
The few square miles extending over the valleys of 
the Moselle and the Sarre which Prussia wrung from 
France in 1815 and 1871 are the foundations of the whole 
industrial strength of modern Germany, but the most 
important asset consists in the huge iron-ore deposits 
south-west of the Sarre valley, in Lorraine. If she had 
not annexed that part of Lorraine, Germany would not 
have dared to go to war at all ; she would never ha\e been 
able to supply her munition factories with an unUmited 
quantity of raw material ; she could not ha\e stood the 
terrific strain of a war like this. 
Last year, a member of the French Chamber of De- 
puties, M. Fernand Engerand, who is also a distinguished 
economist, discovered in the Archives Nationales certain 
documents that prove that the coalfields owned by the 
Prussian State, in the Sarre mining area, were first worked 
by French engineers, and that the canal which is their 
main outlet was built with the help of I'Vench money. 
It cannot thus be argued that those who were in pos- 
session of the country did not know the treasure it con- 
cealed. When the Prussians stole it, it was already worked 
by F-rench enterprise and capital. France knew very well 
the value of the Lorraine deposits. As far back as 1867, 
she had begun to canalise the !\Ioselle for the purpose of 
developing the mineral wealth of the region. In fact, 
she had so much regard for it that she secured in the 
Treaty of Frankfort a clause by which the Germans 
boimd themseKes to proceed with the canalisation in the 
new German territories. But, although (iermany has for 
the last forty years displayed an obstinate energy in 
developing a wonderful system of waterways, she displayed 
an unflinching opposition to the deepening of the Moselle 
and Sarre rivers. She devoted enormous labour and 
money to make the Rhine, up to Strasburg, a magnificent ' 
waterway ; she connected the Rhine and the Wcser with 
a whole network of deep and broad canals, through 
which F2mdcn has become the maritime outlet of West- 
phalia ; and, on the Rhine, the famous port of Ruhrort 
I>rides itself on ha\-ing a bigger tonnage than the port of 
London 
A Westphalian Monopoly 
Why then did Germany always refuse to improve the 
carrying capacity of the Moselle and the Sarre rivers ? 
German estimates reckoned the cost of the deepening of 
the rivers at 40 million marks (£2,000,000) for the 
Moselle, and 27 million marks (£1,330,000) for the Sarre. 
In comparison with the cost of the gigantic works carried 
out on the Rhine and on the Westphalian waterways, 
these sums are trifling and they support the view that the 
enterprise could have been carried out easily and quickly, 
if it had not been for the obdurate opposition of the 
Prussian Government. In i()05, after repeated efforts, 
the scheme was at last brought before -the Prussian 
Landtag, but it was promptly rejected. 
Then the manufacturers of Lorraine and Alsace, far 
from desisting, subscribed to a common fund, and 
succeeded in bringing the scheme before the Reichstag, 
offering to contribute to the canahsation of the Moselle 
nearly half the cost of the enterprise. They met with 
no better success. 
This extraordinary attitude seems to have been dictated 
by two very strong considerations. First, the Prussians 
feared lest a more complete development of metallurgy 
in Lorraine might compete disastrously with the West- 
phalian industry, which had plenty of coal near at hand, 
but only an inadequate supply of iron ore. The second 
consideration, very likely the strongest, had a political 
and a military importance. Lorraine was too. near the 
French border to become the centre of the main German 
industry, as it might be upset, destroyed or captured at 
the outbreak of a war. It is easy to realize that if, for 
instance, Krupp's works had been shifted from Essen 
right to the centre of the mining district of Lorraine, 
they would have been within daily reach of the Allied 
airmen, whose bombs would have soon made havoc of 
them. 
Just as the giant Fafnir, in Wagner's poem, put his 
gold in a 'cavern and lay on it, the Rhinegold was thus 
locked up in a ca\e where it was accessible only to the 
Westphalian manufacturers. The iron ore of Lorraine 
was made entirely dependent upon Westphalian coal, 
and so one of the richest mineral districts of the world 
could only develop its resources for the benefit of the 
German Empire, for the preparation of the future 
Deutschturrt. 
The importance of the Lorraine deposits, and also of 
the coal question connected with the ore problem, is 
set out in a secret petition sent on May 30th, 1913, to the 
German Chancellor by the six great industrial and agri- 
cultural associations of the Empire ; one could not wish 
for a more candid admission : 
The manufacture of shells requires a quantity of iron and 
steel such as nobody would iiavc thought of before the war. 
l''or the shells in grey cast-iron alone, which are being used 
in place of steel shells when no superior quality is needed, 
quantities of pig iron have been required for the last 
months which reach at least 4,000 tons a day. No precise 
figures are available on this point. But it is already 
certain that if the output in iron and steel had not been 
doubled since the month of August the prosecution of the 
war would have become impossible. 
As raw material for the manufacture of these quantities, 
the minctle (oolitic iron-ore) is assuming a more and more 
important place, as only this kind of iron ore can be ex- 
tracted in our country in quickly increasing quantities. 
The production in other areas is considerably reduced, 
and the importation by sea even of Swedish iron-ore has 
become so difficult, that in many regions, even outside 
J-uxembuurg and Lorraine, the minctic at the present 
moment covers from 60 to 60 per cent, of the maimfacture 
