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Show GERMANY WILL M. COPPEOBSTITUTE One who arrived this week from Europe gives t he Boston News Bureau some interesting in-teresting sidelights on the copper situation situa-tion in Germany. lie fays: '"The Germans are wonderful nu-titl workers, and no other people ap-pronr-h them in their economic substitutes of one metal for another. The Germans have recentlv discovered hoxiie and the Swiss have stopped importing boxite over the French border and are getting it over their Ge:man border, manufacturing aluminum and shipping it into Germany us a substitute for copper. "The allies were puzzled over the de- ; mand for raw copper by Switzerland and 1 Scandinavia. Investigation showed that the demand was commercial, legitimate j and for interior consumption, and not for re-export into Germany. The simple ! explanation was thus expressed by the Swiss-buyers in London: " 'Before the war you English never bothered about selling copper or brass goods in small quantities in such a small country as Switzerland. You preferred to sell copper in chunks to Germany, and we had to buy our brass goods of Germany. Ger-many. Now we must make our own brass, and we have to come to the English En-glish base for the copper.' "Now, the real fact is that Germany has not the need for copper that you Americans have figured. Germany used more trran 300,000,000 pounds of copper per annum before the war, more than 75 per cent of which she imported, but of this total she re-exported nearly one-half in brass manufactures. Under the strain of war she can somewhat increase her home production possibly to 100,000.000 pounds. She can substitute aluminum, iron and steel in her telephone and electric elec-tric transmission plants and thereby bring into the war hundreds of millions of pounds of copper. She also has boys and girls bringing forth every unused piece of copper that can be scraped up within the empire and from the- abandoned aban-doned battle fields. "I noted in reading the German papers recently that even the copper roof of the kaiser's palace in Berlin had been taken by the government. You will notice no-tice also that Germany Is saving her munitions mu-nitions on the west front by acting for the most part on the defensive, while the allies have there been prodigal of men and munitions. It is true that Germany is suffering in many ways, but her lack of copper is not at present important. "The word throughout Germany is not now Spartan heroism, but Spartan sacrifice sacri-fice rigorous diet and rigorous saving." |