But this was not the explanation that emerged from headquarters; instead it was stated that if Briey were bombarded, the Germans, in reprisal, would turn their guns on Dombasle in Meurthe-etMoselle, where equally large-scale mining operations were supplying the French with much of their own raw material for ordnance and ammunition. So long as the French left Briey alone the Germans would let Dombasle alone; what hothead was there who would want to upset the apple cart under these circumstances? Of course, it the French and Germans had leveled the other's smelters, the war would have ended sooner. And so would war-time profits. That was that. Briey and Dombasle came unscathed through the war.

Here the proof of the international operations of armament makers is open is no question at all. In corroboration there is spread upon the records the testimony of Deputy Pierre Etienne Flandin (scarcely a flaming Bolshevist, for he was later Finance Minister under Tardieu) to the effect that he, an artillery of the French Second Army had been expressly forbidden to bombard Briey when the chance existed, and when a ten-mile penetration of the sector would have come close to spelling German ruin. And the statement of his colleague, Deputy Barthe, in the Chamber on January 24, 1919, lost little of its significance in the long, loud, vicious debates and investigations which followed it: "I affirm that either by the fact of the international solidarity of the great metallurgy companies, or in order to safeguard private business interests, our military chiefs were ordered not to bombard the establishments of the Briey basin, which were being exploited by the enemy during the war. I affirm that our aviation service received instructions to respect the blast furnaces in which the enemy steel was being made, and that a general who wished to bombard them was reprimanded."

There is a quality of delirium about facts like these. Anyone who comes upon them for the first time is likely to feel a sense of incredulity that these can be facts at all; to feel that they must be, instead, some insane fiction of super-Voltaire.

The sense of incredulity is quite excusable. Yet the facts ARE facts--and into the bargain they are quite easily explicable. In this present imperfect world nations have yet found no agreement upon practical methods of disarming. So long as they refuse to, the easiest way for them to stay armed is to permit a full exploitation of private profit system in the manufacture of armaments. By this device nations avoid the expense and annoyance of maintaining plants and inventories of armaments throughout a period of twenty years when perhaps they may never be needed at all; the private armorer meanwhile is able to keep his plants oiled and humming by sales not only to his own government but to foreign markers in which he is able to foment enough suspicion to sell large bills of goods. Here is the rock upon which every private conference that precedes official disarmament conferences has split. Here the circle closes. So long as we must have armaments we must lend rein and scope to the business methods of the armorers. What happened at Briey, considered in this light, was very simple: the mere working out of the profit system in armaments to its perfect, logical, and ultimate conclusion.