Two hundred and fifty eight ships carried 1,321,456 tons of iron ore; 25 ships carried 41,830 tons of zinc ore, the remainder taking copper ore, pyrites, nickel, manganese, and calamine.
Lord Devonport added:
"What has come of the much-vaunted order in Council declaring that no goods should either enter or leave Germany? What is the ultimate destination of these cargoes? There is no concealment about the matter. Every captain knows exactly. There are no facilities in Holland for converting ore into pig-iron; not a single blast-furnace, and no coal to feed it even if there were.
"The cargoes are transhipped into barges and carried up the Rhine to a place in easy communication with Essen, where Krupp's works are situated. Sweden is the main source of the supply. It is astounding to me that the British Government should sit still while these ores are sent to the enemy from mines which are virtually the property of the Swedish Government.
"Great though the imports of ore into Rotterdam have been, they are insignificant compared with the importations in German ports in the Baltic Sea and the North Sea—Lübeck, Stettin, Swinemunde, Emden and others. From May 1st to December 31st, 1915, the total of those imports were 556 cargoes and 2,089,000 tons of ore. The question is going to become critical for, though the country has been tolerant and long-enduring, things have not gone too well. The sheet-anchor of the situation is the British Fleet."
"The figures," says Fairplay, the shipping paper, "sufficiently indicate the absurdity of supposing that the Netherlands Overseas Trust or any similar artificial would-be barrier as at present constituted can, in fact, prevent the enemy from receiving vital supplies of raw or manufactured material."
Nineteen days after the delivery of Sir Edward Grey's "blockade" speech in the House of Commons Mr. T. Gibson Bowles, speaking at a great City demonstration in London on February 14th, 1917, under Lord Devonport as Chairman and convened for the purpose of protesting against hampering our Navy, said: "Since the war began Sir Edward Grey had hampered, shackled, and strangled the Fleet in the performance of its duties." Whilst Lord Charles Beresford wrote to the Chairman: "If the Government had used our sea power as they were legally entitled to do at the commencement of the war, by instituting an effective blockade and making all goods entering Germany absolute contraband, the war would now be over."
Lord Aberconway added: "The matter is far too serious to be trifled with any longer; my personal knowledge intensifies my conviction."
The Government having attempted to evade any direct answer to the startling figures and accusations of the Daily Mail disclosing the get-rich-quick method of the Scandinavian Goulashes, Lord Northcliffe sent a Special Commissioner to Holland, and published the result of his investigations in February, 1916. It showed a repetition of the sordid Scandinavian fiasco, a further proof that the so-called blockade was leaking in every seam.
To enumerate the masses of statistics would be wearisome. It is sufficient for present purposes to quote a few extracts.
Cocoa Beans.—Of the 528 tons imported into Holland in 1916 Germany received the whole.
Cocoa Butter.—England could only obtain half what she had in 1913, whereas Germany obtained five times as much.