Abstract
IT is gradually becoming more and more clear, as the history of the Great War is further examined, that one of the main objects of Germany in attacking her neighbours was commercial aggrandisement by destroying rival manufactories and by appropriating the raw material of industry wherever it lay conveniently situated for that purpose, this raw material being in the first instance all available mineral wealth. She had already done this with supreme success in 1871; the iron-ore fields of Lorraine then wrested from France had formed one of the mainstays of Germany's industrial development, and she fully expected that the new war would yield proportionately valuable results. This was Germany's avowed policy; in the words of one of the acknowledged German authorities, Frederick Naumann, the object of a country nowadays in going to war is purely “to benefit the economic development of the country,” and German writers have ever since the commencement of the war announced their fixed determination to retain in German possession the iron-ore fields of French Lorraine, thus giving Germany “the practical monopoly of iron-ore in Europe,” and assuring her of victory in the future wars to which she was already looking forward.
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LOUIS, H. Mineral Production in Relation to the Peace Treaty . Nature 103, 205–206 (1919). https://doi.org/10.1038/103205b0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/103205b0