Part 35 (1/2)

From Germany. From Great Britain.

1914 861 660 1915 Nil 6,591 1916 Nil 12,273

BARLEY FOR MALT

In 1916 Great Britain exported to Holland about fifteen times more barley than normal pre-war exports, so diminis.h.i.+ng our home supplies that the British working-man was deprived of his national beverage through shortage and prohibitive prices. Whisky also was similarly affected.

TOBACCO

The Christian spirit of ”love your neighbours and your enemies better than yourselves” had apparently no limits with the British Government.

Their loyal and hard-suffering subjects were deprived of a full supply of the soothing weed on the excuse of economising freight room, but no effort seems to have been made to curtail _Dutch supplies_, which were _thirty-five times greater than the pre-war exports_.

In 1914 Hamburg and Bremen exported 4,544 tons of tobacco to Holland, but in 1915 and 1916 neither of these towns exported any at all.

The amounts exported by Holland from January to June in tons were as follows:

To Great Britain. To Germany.

1914 1,611 31,891 1915 1,672 54,456 1916 923 96,931

The figures published by the German Steel and Iron Manufacturers a.s.sociation for the first six months of each respective year show the following outputs, thanks to Sir Francis Oppenheimer's previous Netherlands Overseas Trust, which permits iron ore in millions of tons to proceed direct to Krupps' and other blast furnaces in Germany without let or hindrance to be used against us.

PIG IRON Tons 1915 5,530,000 1916 6,497,000

STEEL

1915 6,187,000 1916 7,756,000

The _Lokal Anzeiger_, July 28th, 1916, remarked: ”These figures const.i.tute a most gratifying state of affairs in respect of the _requirements of the German Armies_.” No wonder the captured German officer remarked: ”You English will always be fools, whilst we Germans can never be gentlemen”!

In August[25] a Mr. E. Bell, of 12, Yarborough Road, Lincoln, wrote to the Press as follows:

”The talk of tightening the blockade of Germany is rather futile in face of the following Board of Trade figures referring to cotton yarn exported from the United Kingdom to the following neutral countries:

JUNE Sweden Norway Denmark Holland Switzerland 1914 108,900 218,700 106,400 3,220,800 722,600 1915 260,800 348,300 204,700 4,493,300 1,788,800 1916 279,200 508,200 598,400 7,539,800 1,304,100

”Germany is obviously getting the surplus.”

The values[26] of New York exports taken for the week July 30th to August 5th are equally startling:

1915. 1916.

New York to Norway 1,884 137,176 Holland 713 717,601 Holland and Scandinavia 123,327 970,255

On August 26th, 1916, an agreement was signed between the Dutch Fis.h.i.+ng a.s.sociation and the British Government regarding the release of some 120 to 150 Dutch fis.h.i.+ng-boats laid up in Scottish ports, whereby not more than 20 per cent. of their catch shall be permitted to go to Germany. Of the remainder twenty per cent. was to be retained for home consumption, and sixty per cent. sold to neutral countries. On each barrel of this sixty per cent. the good, kind, benevolent British Government agreed to pay a subsidy of 30s. to the Dutch boat-owners.