February 7, 191 8 
Land & Water 
The New State in Europe— IV : By Hilaire Belloc 
In his concluding article Mr. Belloc deals with the economic 
aspjct of th; Prussian domination over Eastern Europe. 
THE last point to be made upon the New State 
which Prussia has set up in liurope is economic. 
The economic aspect of a natioi is too much 
emphasised to-day. The economic aspect of history 
has even been put forward in the Universities to the 
exclusion of other aspects, and economic causes have even been 
falsely called the sole fundamental causes of all historical 
pheno.Tiena. But precisely because the economic aspect 
occupies this e.xaggerated position to-day, one can use it as a 
weapon in argument. If you can convince a man that tliis 
new Central State will have a certain econo.Tiic tendency, 
and that this tendency will be adverse to our interests, he will 
understand what you are saying much better than if you tell 
him that it imperils him by its military strength : it will 
mean much more than telling him that the spiritual character 
of Prussia is our peril. 
The two things we have to seize about the new Central 
State are first the enormous margin for development, the 
vast oppo.-tunities for the creation of new wealth, which the 
Eastern part of it presents, and secondly, the fact that the 
combination as a whole will be used not only as a competitor, 
but as a hostile competitor to the West, and particularly to 
Britain. 
Everywhere east of the German block, but particularly in 
the two regions, one of which was until recently the Russian, 
the other of which still is the Turkish Empire, there are 
undeveloped natural resources the potential extent of which 
cannot even be guessed so large are they, and even the visible 
or known untapped resources of which rather resemble those 
of a new colony than of an old State. 
Russia's Cotton Crop 
I cannot in such 'an article as this do more thai give a few 
examples taken at random, but I think that even these will 
be found sufficiently striking to emphasise the point I am 
making. I consider only the Russian field for the moment. 
Take, for example, cotton as the production of that article 
stood in what was until last year, the Russian Empire, and 
what will be, if the Great Central State becomes permanent, 
an open field for German exploitation. 
We ought to note very particulirly the position of cotton. 
It concerns us. Germany till to-diy depended entirely for 
its cotton upon supply from over sea. The maritime poAfers 
(first of Great Britain, now of Great Britain and the United 
States combined), by cutting o.'? the supply, have already 
hampered Germany in the war. Had it been cut 0.*^ entirely 
at the beginning, as was strongly advocated in these columns 
more than three years ago, the war would have been won 
long ago. , But with the Central State drawing upon the 
resources of what was o.ice the Russian Empire, there 
develops a state of affairs with which I think most people in 
this country are quite unfamiliar. 
Russia produced before the war more than 560,000,000 lb. 
of cotton upon her own soil. The machinery in the factories 
and mills was British and the management was largely 
British. The number of spindles was increasing normally 
by 3 per cent, a year. But the striking thing in the statistics 
is that even while the industry — which was quite a modem 
one — was developing, Russia managed to produce upon her 
own soil more than half the cotton which was needed by her mills. 
Beyond this there was another," a most striking phenomenon. 
When the war cut off external supply, Russia, in spite of all 
the difficulties of the moment, in spite of the fact that, as 
an industrial country, she was very ill developed ; in spite of 
the congestion on her railways, managed to increase enor- 
mously the produce of cotton upon her own soil to replace 
that which could not be brought from abroad. The pro- 
portion of native cotton fifteen years before the war had been 
38 per cent. It had risen in five years to 41 per cent. By 
1910 it was 51 per cent, of the total amount used, though that 
total amount had itself further increased by 40 per cent. 
(All these figures are exclusive of Finland). Well, under the 
strain of the early part of the war, the proportion of cotton 
groietn on Russian soil leapt up by 35 per cent. 
For the truth is that the mere area suitable for the growth 
of cotton in the continental mas'; cast of Germany has only 
just begun to be dealt witii. It,can certainly.be multiplieJ 
by three at least, and probably by a lar^ -r multiple ; while 
apart from m^re area, the rate of production per acre can 
also be increased very greatly. 
The way in which this quite modern feature has developed. 
and therefore what we may look forward to in the future 
under German organisation and guidance, and with a supply of 
German capital and German training, may be estimited from 
the case of the Khiva oasis. _ Wnere Khiva in 1885 produced 
50 lb. of cotton, it produce'd five years later, in 1890, three 
timjs a; much — 150 lb. Ten years later, in 1900, the produc- 
tion had more than doubled. There were 320 lb. to the 50 lb. 
of i8i5. Ten years later it had again more than doubled. 
There were 6S0 lb. in 1910 to the 50 lb. of 1885 ; while in the 
year of strain, the first year of the war, when the blockade so 
greatly intensified internal production, no less than 1,145 lb. 
of cotton were produced in Khiva for every 50 lb. that had 
been produced thirty years before ! 
I recommend those figures to the attention of Lancashire, 
with the added remark that the New Central European State, 
exploiting the East, will have political and military power 
behind it if it remains what Prussia intends, and will be able 
to enforce its produce upon the markets of Asia in a way that 
the old Russian Empire could never do. 
Minerals 
Another matter to note is the production of platinum. 
This essential in electrical work is almost entirely derived 
from Russian soil.\ Before the war nine-tenths of the world's 
supply came fro.n the neighbourhood of the Ural Mountains 
and, what is perhaps mjre important, the opportunities for 
expansion in the near future are enormous. There was, before 
tha war, a quarrel between the large proprietors and the small 
controllers of placer-mining which hampeieJ the production. 
So lo.ng as anarchy prevails we may be certain that this check 
will be severely felt. But once order i§ restored through the 
influence of a great German organised Central State, which 
will necessarily " run " this economic factor, it may have a 
develop.ment of almost any amount. 
It must be admitted in this connection that there is a con- 
trary view. It has been maintained that the intensive pro- 
duction of platinum just before the war was due to the excep- 
tionally high prices then ruhng. Should the price fall the 
po3rer sands which are now the subject of placer miping 
would be abandoned. But, on the other hand, there are 
sundry undeveloped regions, especially in the north of the 
Ural districts, which may more than make up for the difference. 
Another way of lookin^^ at the econo.mic potentiality of 
all that Hes east of the German conquests, another way of 
testing the extraordinary opportunities that will he before 
the capitalists of the New Central State, if it is maintained, 
is the rate of increase in products which was shown after the 
co.mparatively recent introduction of industrialism. 
For instance, if you take the production of iron ore in the 
seven years 1893-99 inclusive, you get a curve rising so rapidly 
that the total production more than doubles. It increases in 
the projortion of 21 to 45. The exploitation of coal is far 
more striking. You find it rising between 1880 and 1890, 
from four to five miUions of tons, but in the ne.xt ten years, 
from 1890 to 1900, it rises from that figure of five million to 
over thirteen milhon tons. In this country tho.se figures 
naturally seem to us so small abs dutely as to be negligible ; 
but the relative increase is the point to seize. The industry 
was only just being developed and yet produced such results 
in so short a time. And when we consider the further pro- 
duction in later years the riseTis still more remarkable. By 
1913, in the year before the war, it had multiplied again by 
more than 2\ and had reached thirty-three million tons, 
and even under the strain of the war (when one large coal- 
field was cut off by enemy occupation and the labour difficulty 
WIS severely felt), the produce only fell to just under 28 
million tons — and this is excluding, of course, the two millions 
odd from Asiatic Russia. 
But if we were considering only coal in general, the Russian 
resources would always seem small — unless indeed new fields 
were to be discovered. Further, the Central State of which 
we are speaking has very large resources of its o.vn, which 
overshadow those of Russia. The re-.Uy striking thing in the 
statistics is the position of anthraci'.e coal. 
This hard coal, invaluable hitherto for naval operations 
(to be supplanted perhaps by oil, but at any rate still holding 
a unique position) has, I believe, only two great fields of 
exploitation in Europe, which are those of South Wales 
and of the Donetz basin in the soutli of Russia. It is pcrhap; 
not sufficiently appreciated that the calculated reserve oi 
all European anthracite coal lies principally in the basin of 
the Donetz. It has disadvantag?s apart from those of recent 
exploitation, unskilled labour and the rest of it. Tlie seams 
are often verv thin, the distribution is uneven and does not 
