RUSSIA'S RESOURCES.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXV, Issue 90, 19 April 1915, Page 4

RUSSIA'S RESOURCES.

Writing in the ".Journal <le Geneve," a Swiss scientist, who lias spent many years in Russia gives some interesting- information regaining that country's resources. Speaking of the Russian Government's declaration that it did not require any more ammunition from Paris, and that Russia conld now supply herself, the Swiss states this did not surprise him at all. Russia's resources in the matter of arms and ammunition, he remarks, are inexhaustible, and she has no need of anyone else's assistance. Russia is the only one of the Great Powers which need have no fears 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 be under no uneasiness on this score. Coal she has in plenty, several coal mines having been only recently worked. In Siberia there is any amount of coal. Tt is true that English coal used to be sent to Petrograd, but it can easily be dispensed with. Russia, moreover, produces more petroleum than any other country in the world, and not at Baku alone, but in other places. Mineral oilfields, still unworked, exist in the Petchora district, and two years ago, between the Ural and the Caspian Sea, petroleum enough was discovered to last Europe for the 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 the prices cannot be 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 TransSiberian."