WHY IS AMERICA IN WAR?  HERE'S GERMAN'S IDEA
Uncle Sam Has Eye on Alsace Potash Mines, Says
Greifswald Professor.
AMSTERDAM, Jan. 17.—The German
people now are being told that the
United States went into the war, not
to make the world safe for democracy,
but in order that American capitalists
might acquire the potash mines of Alsace.
Professor Routh of Greifswald university, in an article in the Vossische
Zeitung, says:
"American troops, we hear, are now
occupying a portion of the French
front. It is quite possible that they
will soon appear along the Rhine-Rhone canal, in order to establish
American claims to the potash mines
there, seeing that America's peaceful
designs on our potash in 1909-10 (by
purchase) were defeated by the passage of the German potash law, which
prohibits foreign ownership.
"Along with coal and iron, potash is
Germany's strongest weapon, and if
the best of it should be taken away
from her she would be deprived of the
best economic club she can wield
against the United States. Without
the 250,000 tons of potash, fertilizer
which the American annually import
from Germany in peace time, their
cotton, tobacco, sugar and fruit crops
would be in perpetual jeopardy.
"So it is necessary that our world
monopoly in potash should remain intact. It will enable us to demand in
exchange certain necessary raw materials from our present foes. Our;
watchword must be: 'Not one inch of
notash-bearinsr soil to the enemy.' "