careful
about coal as though it were imported from the other end of the
world.

Frau Bertha and her husband (a simple and modest man, who is, I was
informed, entirely in the hands of his specialists, and who has the
wisdom to let well alone) have put up a big fight with Batocki, the
food dictator. The semi-famine had not reached its height when I
was in Essen, and the suffering was not great there. A
munition-maker working in any of the Rhenish-Westphalian towns is
regarded by Germans as a soldier. As the war has proceeded he has
been subject to continuous combing out.

The amount of food allowed to those engaged in these great
factories and rolling mills is, I estimate, 33 per cent. more than
that allowed to the rest of the civil population. In all the
notices issued throughout Germany in regard to further food
restrictions, there is appended the line, "This change is necessary
owing to the need for fully supplying your brothers in the army and
the munition works."

Essen is a town that before the war had a population exceeding
300,000. A conservative estimate makes the figure to-day nearly
half a million. The Krupp Company employ about 120,000. A
prevalent illusion is that Krupps confine their war-time effort
exclusively to making war material. That is a mistake. A
considerable part of Krupp's work is the manufacture of articles
which can be exchanged for food and other products in neighbouring
countries, thus taking the place of gold. At Lubeck, I saw the
quays crowded with the products of Essen in the shape of steel
girders and other building machinery going to Sweden in exchange
for oil, lime from Gotland, iron ore, paper, wood, and food
products,

A mining engineer of the great mines at Kiruna, Lapland, told me
that he had just given an order for steam shovels from the
Westphalian manufacturers, who are also sending into Holland knives
and scissors and other cutlery and tools.

Germany's principal bargaining commodities with contiguous neutral
nations are steel building materials, coal, and dye-stuffs. Coal
dug in Belgium by Belgian miners is a distinct asset for Germany,
when she exchanges it for Swiss cattle, Dutch cheese, and Swedish
wood. When we consider that the great industrial combinations of
Rhineland and Westphalia are not only reaping enormous munition
profits, but supply the steel and coal which form the bulk of
German war-time exports, we can easily understand why some Social
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