reserve, but to be placed in the Reichsbank and not counted in
the bank reserves. There was also to be coined 125,000,000 marks in
silver.

The whole was simply a stirrup-cup to enable Germany quickly to bound
into the war-saddle with purchase of horses, food, and the light or
perishable munitions of war which must be had at the outset and at a
time when war panic first seizes the currency and supplies of a
community.

The basis of German finance was 1,200,000,000 marks in specie, mostly
gold, in the vaults of the Reichsbank at Berlin--the central bank of
issue and bankers' deposits--with its 485 branches.

Before the war this metal reserve had been brought up to 1,400,000,000
marks. At the outbreak of the war, of course, the Spandau tower
reserve in specie must have gone into the bank, and every metal reserve
that the government could lay its hands upon likewise went into the
bank. Germany then boasted a gold reserve approaching 2,000,000,000
marks. In this month of February the bank gold reserve was put well
above 2,000,000,000.

Bank-paper issues meanwhile expanded by the billion.

The great contest in Germany is to maintain this bank metal reserve,
and it is the task of Sisyphus and of herculean proportions. Outside
of the United States, Germany has probably little, if any, credit
to-day. She must pay in gold for what she buys from without, and from
without she must get copper and oil. Lubricating oils are troubling
her now quite as much as diminishing supplies of gasolene.

To get copper for munitions of war she can produce within her own
borders 90,000,000 pounds. Of late years she has been importing from
America 300,000,000 pounds per annum, so that electrification has been
going on for many years all over Germany, and copper wires in
telegraph-postoffice work scintillate in the skyline of the German
cities. These can come down and be replaced with iron or aluminum. Of
course, the first wires to come down will be the power-transmission
wires. They can readily be replaced with aluminum, of which Germany is
the parent producer. A very fair telephone service can be maintained
with iron wires. Those who are looking for the exhaustion of Germany
on a copper basis are reckoning without knowledge of German resources.

For petrol she can substitute benzol and alcohol, with some
inconvenience. Germany is likewise the home and center of industrial
alcohol, which it manufactures from surplus products.