An advertisement appeared recently in a Berlin paper which read as follows: "For Exchange: Fifty Polish workpeople, twenty men, thirty girls, for exchange for an equal number of workpeople of other nationalities."
Wherein does this differ from slavery? God help the workers of America if Germany wins this war. Do you realize what Germany proposes for America? Mr. McAdoo has already told us that she proposes to take from us an indemnity of one hundred and twenty-five billions of dollars, one-half our total wealth. She has told us that she will take charge of our Monroe Doctrine and "put us in right relations with Germany." Now she tells us that she intends to dictate to us our tariff laws, to tell us what we must admit free of duty and what we must ship without impost. In other words, Germany proposes to bring the American workman, who before this war was receiving an average wage of $667 a year, into competition with the Prussian worker, who lived on $225 a year. Let every laboring man, skilled or unskilled, understand his own vital stake in the winning of this war.
Now look at some of the issues of this war.
You know Germany's dream of a Middle Empire; of a great new kingdom that is to stretch from the English Channel to the Persian Gulf, from the borders of Normandy through Mesopotamia. It is to include Northeastern France, Belgium, Luxemburg, Denmark, Holland, Germany, Austro-Hungary, parts of Switzerland and Italy, Serbia, Roumania, Turkey, Armenia, Asia Minor and Mesopotamia. Into this Middle Kingdom Greece and Roumania on the South and Norway and Sweden on the North are to be forced by economic pressure. To this Empire we must now add Poland, Courland, Livonia, Finland and the Ukraine, while Persia is to be "exploited" for the benefit of Germany.
Think for a moment of the resources of this Empire.
Hungary, Roumania, Asia Minor, the Ukraine and Mesopotamia can feed the entire world. The oil fields of Roumania, Southern Russia and Mesopotamia can light the world. The iron fields of Mesopotamia are said to be the richest undeveloped iron mines existing on the globe, and the Argennis copper mines are without a rival. This Empire could provide an army of fifteen million men in times of peace and of forty million in times of war. Its railroads, rivers and canals afford the most complete transportation system heart could desire. You could not starve it and with its ports upon four oceans, you never could blockade it. Strategically, it lies across three great divisions of the world, Europe, Asia and Africa, in such position that it could dominate them all.
Now it is important that you should understand the relation of iron to this war, for iron means steel, and steel means guns, rifles, shells, aeroplanes, ships and all the material of war. A nation that can control the world's iron supply can dominate the world.
At the outbreak of this war Germany had an annual production of twenty-eight millions tons of iron, of which seven million came from Germany and twenty-one million came from Alsace-Lorraine, which Germany stole from France in 1870. France had twenty-two million tons of iron a year, of which fifteen came from the basin of Briey, in Northeastern France. The first rush of Germany carried her over the coal fields of Belgium, over Luxemburg, over the mines of the Briey Basin and put her in possession of practically all the foundries and steel mills that France possessed. When Germany settled down to trench warfare she had an annual production of forty-nine million tons of iron, seven million from Germany, twenty-one from Lorraine, six from Luxemburg and fifteen from the occupied districts of France, while France had only seven million left. That is why Germany was so bitter against England when England entered the war; that is why she was so insistent that we should put an embargo on munitions, for if England had not come in and kept the seas open, if we had consented to forbid the shipment of munitions, France must have swiftly fallen through the sheer starvation of her guns, for a nation with seven million tons of iron a year cannot contend with one possessing forty-nine million tons.
But stop for a moment to remember, since we are speaking of the shipment of munitions, that Austria herself, the Government of Vienna, sold to the Confederate Government some thousands of stacks of arms during our Civil War, and refused either to forbid the shipment or to resell to the Government in Washington. Germany sold arms to the Boers and to England during the War in South Africa, and when the English blockade made it impossible to continue selling to the Boers she went on selling to England. She sold to Spain during our war with Spain. She has never considered placing an embargo upon her own munition plants when other nations were at war, yet she poured out the vials of her hate upon us for doing what she herself has always done.