RUSSIA'S SUPPLY OF WAR MUNITIONS

Dominion, Volume 8, Issue 2431, 9 April 1915, Page 5

RUSSIA'S SUPPLY OF WAR MUNITIONS

f INEXHAUSTIBLE RESOURCES FACTORIES AT HIGH PRESSURE ' Writing to tho "Journal do Geneve," a Swiss scientist, who has spent many years in Russia, gives some interesting information regarding that country's resources. Speaking of tho Russian Government's declaration that it did not require any more ammunition from Paris, and that Russia, could now supply herself, the Swiss states that this did not surprise him at' all. "Russia's resources in. the matter of arms and ammunition," ho remarks, "aro inexhaustible, and she has no need of anyone else's assistance. The centre of tho manufacture is Motobilikhaj where 30,000 hands are employed. . . . The immense factories at Barantcha turn out nothing but projectiles. As for the PiitilofE works, at Petrograd, it Is a Russian Creusot or Essen,' and fully 50,000 men aro working there day and night. At Sormovo, near Niim-Nov-gorod, rolling stock is made, military trains, and cannon, bosides which largo | French war material manufactories exist at Tsaritzin, on the Volga. Then there is another manufacturing centre at Briansk, 60uth of Moscow, in the Government of Orel. Russia's war industry is at present equal, if not superior, to that of any other belligerent, "Russia, is the only one of the Great Powers which need have no fear regarding her economic condition. She has abundance of copper, which is beginning to run short in Germany—large copper mines' in the Ural, in Siberia,, in the Caucasus, and other districts. Lead is found in such quantities in the Altai that she need bo mid or no uneasiness on this score. Coal she has in plenty; several coal mines having been only recontly worked. 11l Siberia there is any amount of coal. It is t.rno tiio>. Eimlish coal used to bo >..» i . T sent to Petrograd, but it 'can easily ba dispensed with. Russia, moreover, produces more petroleum than any othor country in the world, and not at Baku alone but in other places. Mineral oilfields, still unworked, exist in the Petchoia district, and two years ago, between the Ural and the Caspian Sea, petroleum enough was discovered to last Europe for tho next fifty, or sixty years. As for cereals, Russia has never had so much as now, export being prohibited, while cattle are so cheap that tho prices cannot bo compared .•with those prevailing in any Western country. "The only thing Russia might lack is nitrate," concludes this Swiss, "but this she can get via the Pacific and by the Trans-Siberian." Referring to Germany and her lack of nitrate (which from' time ,to time she assures the world she 13 avoiding or on the point of avoiding by some wonderful scientific discovery), the Swiss remarked: "If she has no more nitric acid this means that.she has no more black powder, no more nitroglycerine, no moro' melinite, no jinoro lyddite—in other words, no more explosives. Nitric acid can be obtained by dissolving nitrate in sulphuric acid, and small quantities aro made by electrolysis in Norway and Switzerland, but they are a mere drop in the ocean. If tho English blockade succeeds in preventing any nitrate from reaching Germany. this will mean a victory which will ultimately be decisive. Nitric acid explosives will not be able to be replaced by explosives made with chlorate of potassium, which are too dangerous to handle. No doubt Germany is holding in reserve a large supply of nitrato of potassium which sheneeds for agriculture, of which she will deprive it for the benefit- of the army, but as slie did not reckon upon a war lasting a year or eighteen months tho time must come when her supplies will bo exhausted. And that will be the end."