The episode of Briey brings us now to the pinnacle of the arrangement structure. Who held the impulsive line officers in check? The rough whose influence was the general reprimanded?

We must look higher than to Schneider-Creusot for the final answer. For far overtopping Schneider-Creusot and its subsidiaries stands that great organization of iron and steel manufactures the co mite des Forges de France.

The Comite des Forges is not as it has frequently been called, the "French Steel Trust." It is not a cartel. Individual French iron and steel companies are bound together by rigid agreements covering quotas and prices in to great groups like the Comptoir Siderurgique de France or into lesser ones like the Comptoir des Rails or the Comptoir des Demi-Products. The Comite cannot be said to "combine" these organizations; in actually, however, it remains the most powerful iron and steel organization in France. It does not sell; it does not produce. Its activities are more subtle, more delicate than that. Essentially its field is in strategy and tactics of the iron and steel industries; accordingly polities and propaganda are its principal concerns. It does not have subsidiaries; it has members that pay dues into its central treasury either upon a basis of their tonnage production or the number of their employees. Two hundred and fifty companies--mince, smelters, metallurgical establishments. foundries--make up its membership and of these 250 companies, over 150 are armament concerns. The nominal capital stock of the member companies of the Comite totals some 7,500,000,000 francs yet some accountants have place the figure for a true valuation as high as 40,000,000,000 France. The chief officer of the Comite, the President is an man of whom we are to hear mach more in just a moment. He derives his power not only from being President of the Comite but as one of the principal owners of his own iron and steel concerns. Beneath him and his administrative board of the Comite there spread out six regional Committees: the Lorie Nord. I'Est, Miniere d'Alsace-Lorraine, Forges de Lorraine, and Champagne. The total tonnage that the members of the Comite produce in France in a typical year is, for pig iron some the 10,000,000 tons and for steel, some 9.500,000 tons.

Members begins with my actually be as small and impressive as the capitalization world make them; it ends in the grand climax of Member No.1. Schneider-Creusot--whose capitalization of 100,00,000 name reflects only a fraction of its true importance. The great and the little thus bound together make up the power and the glory of the Comite. It controls the press: it has the ear of the foreign office.