£r 37,016,698 and expenditure at £r 51,402,327, thus leaving a deficit of £T 14,385,629 to be met by credit operations. The budgetary deficits for the fiscal years 1917 and 1918 were £T 39,077,556 and £r 27,430,396, respectively. Actual war expenditures have averaged about five million Turkish pounds monthly, the total being £r 180,000,000 by the end of 1917. The subscriptions to the first Turkish internal loan disclosed a total of £T 17,977,600, of which £T 7,396,260 were raised in Constantinople and the remainder, in the provinces. This was the first and only attempt on the part of the Ottoman government to defray military expenses out of funds derived from native sources. The Ottoman debt may be estimated at £r 414,334,000, consisting of the following items: 4 Loans from Germany, to Aug. 31, 1917..... Requisitions and deferred payments... Total war debt.... Pre-war debt.... Total public debt.. £T 142,000,000 8,200,000 38,000,000 56,500,000 17,978,000 £T 262,678,000 £T 414,334,000 5 The details of the first six issues of Turkish notes in Germany may be gleaned from articles in the Frankfurter Zeitung. The first issue of £T 5,661,000 payable six months after peace is declared, is secured against a deposit of £r 3,552,000 in gold held in Germany and 1 London Economist, February 23, 1918. 2 Statesman's Yearbook, 1917, p. 1352. • London Economist, September 7, 1918, p. 300. Nieuwe Rotterdamsche Courant, December 5, 1917 and Statesman's Yearbook, 1917. This estimate excludes a loan rumored to have been made shortly before the capitulation of Germany and reported as varying from 32 to 45 million Turkish pounds. London Economist, September 7, 1918, p. 300. On the bulk of these loans, floated outside of Turkey proper, there are no interest charges to be met. October 12 and 15, 1917, in particular. £T 2,109,000 held in Austria. The second issue of £r 7,802,000 and the third issue of £r 11,700,000 are both payable one year after peace, being covered by German exchequer bonds. The fourth loan of £T 27,777,940, repayable in gold from three to seven years after the declaration of peace, was issued against German exchequer bonds and is payable from eight to eleven years after peace. The German government at the same time guaranteed that the Turkish pound would never be allowed to fall below 18.45 marks. Although the law of April 8, 1916, placed the currency on a gold basis, Turkey is now almost completely on a paper basis. The currency is greatly depreciated. Information from German sources had, early in 1917, placed the discount on paper money between 50 and 75 per cent in Constantinople and between 75 and 80 per cent in Bagdad and Syria. It is also reported that the Cabinet has recently decided on the decimal system of coinage and metric system of weights and measures.2 1 LOUIS ROSS GOTTLIEB. PUBLIC SERVICE COMMISSION, 1 Article by Dr. C. A. Schaefer in Archiv für Wirtschaftsforschung in Orient, April, 1917. • London Economist, September 7, 1918, p. 300. THE IRON-ORE PROBLEM OF LORRAINE SUMMARY Importance of iron-ore reserves of Lorraine, 531.-Comparison with reserves of other countries, 534. Quality and location of French reserves, 535. Dependence of German steel industry upon Lorraine, 536. —Also of French steel industry, 538.—Probable French policy of control, 540. Coal production of France and Germany, 544. — Importance of the Saar district, 547.-German pre-war view of importance of controlling iron in the interest of militancy, 552. THE victory of the Allies in the late world war puts an end for the present at least to the pan-German ironmaster's dream of an industrial hegemony based upon national self-sufficiency with regard to the control of the sources of raw materials. This dream was apparently a cause of the war just closed. In the acquisition of Alsace-Lorraine in 1870-71 Germany recognized the possibilities for her iron and steel manufactures involved in the possession of extensive iron-ore fields. The rapid growth of the German iron and steel industry during the two decades immediately preceding the war was based in part upon the control of the iron ores of Lorraine. Had Germany won the war there is little doubt that this control would have been extended over the rich ore fields of northeastern France. The defeat of Germany, however, will not only frustrate her ambition to increase her possessions of valuable ore properties but deprive her of what she had gained in the Franco-German War of 1870-71. The restitution of Alsace-Lorraine will return to France the possession of over two billion tons of iron ore, and with the supplies in the adjoining territory of French Lorraine, will give to that country the finest iron-ore basin in Europe, and one of the finest in the world. The magnitude of the iron-ore reserves of Lorraine both German and French-may be indicated by a brief description of the region in which these deposits are located and a comparison with the total reserves of Europe and with the leading iron-ore fields in other parts of the world. The Lorraine area forms a part of a great basin of ores (minette) embracing a part of northern France, southwestern Germany, Luxemburg and southern Belgium. The mining region of French Lorraine comprises about 150,000 acres with a possible addition of 30,000 acres.1 This field is divided into certain folds or basins, of which the basin of Briey is the most important and contains about two-thirds of the estimated supplies of French Lorraine.2 German Lorraine is somewhat more compact covering an area of about 108,000 acres. This area has supplied the iron and steel industry of western Germany with the greater part of its ore. In 1910 the actual or proved reserves of iron ore with their equivalent metallic iron content were estimated for the Lorraine region as shown by the table on page 533. Out of this enormous total of actual or proved ore reserves France, with the possession of what has been German Lorraine, will have in this field deposits amounting to 5,330,000,000 tons, capable of yielding 1 The Iron and Coal Trades Review (London), December 6, 1918, p. 633. 2 Bulletin of the American Institute of Mining Engineers, September, 1918, pp. 1492-96. The Mineral Industry for 1917, p. 357. The Mineral Industry is published yearly by the McGraw-Hill Book Company of New York. Iron Ore Resources of the World, vol. i, pp. xxvi, xxvii, xliii and xlv. The best survey which has yet been made of the iron-ore resources of the world was that undertaken at the initiative of the Executive Committee of the Eleventh International Geological Congress held in 1910 at Stockholm, Sweden. The results of the survey were published in two large volumes with the above title. 1,755,000,000 tons of iron. The iron-ore reserves of German Lorraine constituted nearly two-thirds of the proved deposits of the German Empire, and those of French Lorraine, over 90 per cent of the estimated total of France. The results of the redistribution of these supplies upon the reserves of the two countries named may be indicated as follows: 2 The proved iron-ore reserves of all Europe were computed in 1910 at 12,031,900,000 metric tons with an equivalent metallic iron content of 4,732,800,000 metric tons. The supplies of France, therefore, as a consequence of the war, now constitute over 45 per cent of 1 The term actual is used to signify proved and commercially valuable ore. Potential is the word used to designate ore supplies which under present conditions cannot be profitably exploited, because of low iron content, unfavorable location with respect to means of transportation, or deleterious ingredients. The dividing line is by no means clearly drawn. Iron Ore Reserves of the World, vol. i, pp. lxxiii-lxxv. |