eived a deputation of
German business men who wished to confer with me on the Italian
customs regime. They spoke openly of the necessity of possessing
themselves of the iron mines of French Lorraine; they looked upon war
as an industrial fact. Germany had enough coal but not enough iron,
and the Press of the iron industry trumpeted forth loud notes of war.
After the conclusion of peace, when France, through a series of wholly
unexpected events, saw Germany prostrate at her feet and without an
army, the same phenomenon took place. The iron industry tends to
affirm itself in France; she has the iron and now she wants coal.
Should she succeed in getting it, German production would be doomed.
To deprive Germany of Upper Silesia would mean killing production
after having disorganized it at the very roots of its development.

Seven years ago, or thereabouts, Germany was flourishing in an
unprecedented manner and presented the most favourable conditions for
developing. Her powerful demographic structure was almost unique.
Placed in the centre of Europe after having withstood the push of so
many peoples, she had attained an unrivalled economic position.

Close to Germany the Austro-Hungarian Empire united together eleven
different peoples, not without difficulty, and this union tended to
the common elevation of all. The vast monarchy, the result of a slow
aggregation of violence and of administrative wisdom, represented,
perhaps, the most interesting historic attempt on the part of
different peoples to achieve a common rule and discipline on the same
territory. Having successfully weathered the most terrible financial
crises, and having healed in half a century the wounds of two great
wars which she had lost, Austria-Hungary lived in the effort of
holding together Germans, Magyars, Slavs and Italians without their
flying at each others' throats. Time will show how the effort of
Austria-Hungary has not been lost for civilization.

Russia represented the largest empire which has ever been in
existence, and in spite of its defective political regime was daily
progressing. Perhaps for the first time in history an immense empire
of twenty-one millions and a half of square kilometres, eighty-four
times the size of Italy, almost three times as large as the United
States of America, was ruled by a single man. From the Baltic to
the Yellow Sea, from Finland to the Caucasus, one law and one rule
governed the most different peoples sca