CURRENT TOPICS.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LVII, Issue 247, 27 March 1915, Page 4

CURRENT TOPICS.

FRIENDLINESS OF GERMANY. Dr Karl Theodor yon Heigel, president of the Academy of' Sciences at Munieh, fills four columns of the Christmas Day edition of the Vienna Zeit with an article on the question "Why Have the Germans so, Few Friends?" He be;,nil by remarking that in these days the question is constantly recurring why the Germans, "who since 1870 have threatened none of their neighbors and have acquired only contemptible remnants in the distribution of the world, w have no friends at all except in Austria. The professor is ungrateful enough not even to mention Enver Pasha. Meanwhile neither bellicqs.e France, nor arrogant England is so much disliked. Notwithstanding German's notorious weakness for all that is foreign, ."the sympathies of Europe turn more and more to thy self-confident Englismen and Frond.men than to the more modest Germain." Since the outbreak of war a friendly voice has seldom been heard in Belgium, Holland, Italy, of Switzerland, "the very countries which draw upon Germany for ;i considerable part of their intellectual food." The professor is also .dissatisfied with the United States and with Spain, Coming' to an attempt to answer ii'is question, Professor von Heigel suggests, first, that the Germans have been too unready tq lend money to foreign countries; secondly, that they have been too careless with regard to the foreign press, and only when war broke out began to pour out a flood of paper which provoked ridicule. Thirdly, he criticises German! peculiarities—private peculiarities of manners and peculiarities in political life which he thinks convince foreign countries "that the Germans are a quarrelsome, divided, and unfortunate people, whose friendship brings peither honor or advantage."

GERMANY'S WEAK LINK. Since the carlyldays of the Avar many competent autholities -have expressed the opinion that the weakest link in German war resources would be the difficulty of replenishing her supplies of copper. In 1913 she consumed 253,000 tons of which only some 20,000 were the product of the Mansfield mine in Prussian Saxony; and her ally is still worse off, with a total production of only some 4300 tons. Yet the heed is imperative; for cartridge cases, for rifles, and quickfiring guns, for the bands of shells and for field telephones, copper of the highes,t ) s absolutely necessary—no substflßfe will serve. The electrical plant ÜBed in many of the factories turning out war equipment must be replenished; for various other purposes copper supplies must be maintained. The measure of her need is the price she is prepared to pay—£loo a ton delivered over her borders, as compared with £BO, the value in the United Kingdom. The figures quoted by Sir Edward Grey, in his answer to the American Note of protest on the subject of detention and search of neutral vessels, show the extent to which Germany regards copper as essential to the prosecution of ilw war. and the surprising means she is ready to adopt to obtain it. According to the Government's calculations, from the outbreak of hostilities to the third week in December, Italy imported from the United States 23.285,0001b, as compared with 15,202,0001b in the corresponding period of 1013. Another group of neutral countries imported 35,347,000 lb as against 7,271,0001b a year ago. While some of the increase may be legitimate preparation for contingencies soon to arise in several of the importing territorities, the coincidence between the need of Germany and the enormous in* crease of imports into those countries leaves no real doubt as to the true destination of a large proportion of this indispensable factor in modern warfare.