The armorers, after all, are the true internationalists. Regardless of their nationalities, they work in concert at the two axioms of their trade--prolong wars, disturb peace. Between 1914 and 1918 they practiced constantly a neat practical way of prolonging war.

It was this: if your enemy is in danger of running short of a basic raw material that he needs in the business of destroying your troops, sell him some of your own surplus stocks.

Such interchanges went on constantly during the war-always of course through a neutral intermediary. (The amenities of warfare must be observed, even at some inconvenience.) Throughout the war English and French industries maintained to Germany a steady stream of glycerin (or explosives), nickel, copper, oil, and rubber. Germany even returned the compliment: she sent France iron and steel and magnetos for gasoline engines. This constant traffic went on during the war via Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Switzerland, Spain, or Holland, by the simple process of transshipment--enemy to neutral to enemy.

It is no bristling Communist who supplies corroboration, but as conservative and well-considered a gentleman as Rear Admiral Montague William Warcop Peter Consett, who was British Naval Attache in Denmark between 1912 and 1917 and in Norway and Sweden between 1912 and 1919. He Stated, in so many words, that if the "blockade" of Germany had been really effective during 1915 and 1916, Germany would have been forced to her knees long before the collapse of Russia permitted her to prolong the struggle by throwing more troops into the trenches of the Western Front. And it is he who is responsible for the following statement: "In 1915 England exported twice as much nickel to Sweden as in the two previous years put together. Of the total imports of 504 tons, seventy were reshipped to Germany. But it can be said that the total importation served the needs of Germany, for the remaining 434 tons were used in Sweden for the manufacture of munitions."

And so it went. Germany, throughout the war, had urgent need of nickel, aluminum, and chemicals like glycerin for explosives. France, because the rich Briey basin and other sources were out of her control, had to scratch hard for iron and steel. Continuously, therefore, what one nation lacked, the armament manufacturers of an enemy nation did their urgent best to provide. Month after month. German heavy industries exported an average of 150,000 tons of scrap iron, steel, or barbed wire to Switzerland, where, having been smelted to a more convenient form, it was then transshipped to France. France, in her turn, shipped chemicals to the Lonza Co. (a Swiss industrial concern, German controlled, but with directors who were French, Italian, and Austrian as well) from which they reached munitions works in Germany. It was all very profitable--and the splendid war went on and on.

Eye Opener: Briey

If you have a naivete about war, shed it now: the war in no way interrupted the cordiality of the armament makers. Throughout the years from 1914 to 1918 they stayed on jolly terms; they even emerged from the war better friends than they were when they went into it. One major war-time episode in particular revealed their unshakable solidarity.

Before 1914 the great iron mines and smelters in the Briey basin provided 70 per cent of the ore used by France. The German advance wrested them from the political control of France--and quite naturally the German artillery chiefs saw to it that the mines were so protected from shell fire that they could be taken over intact. Thenceforth the mines of the Briey basin were operated for the benefit of Germany--in association with other mines in Lorraine which had been in German hands since 1871 they supplied Germany with some three quarters of the ore she consumed during the war.

In 1916, some two years later, the Briey basin came once again within the potential grasp of the French. Throughout the second battle of Verdun. Briey was within range of the operations of the French Second Army. The Briey mines and smelters were turning out tons of raw materials per day which were being continuously turned into weapons of death against French troops, and the naive civilian would therefore suppose that the French Second Army would new into loose its bombing planes and blast out of existence a principal source of enemy supply.

The naive civilian would he quite wrong. Bombs did not burst at Briey: He where near Briey did more than a few shells from either side fall during the entire course of the war. There were even line officers who shared civilian naivete enough to question Fernch G. H. Q. on the immunity of Briey. A reasonable explanation could have been that the French were withholding, fire from Briey because they, in turn, hoped to recapture the basin and turn its products back to France.