for the alleviation of suffering due to the war. The loan was put upon the market Oct. 1 at 98%, yielding 6.30 per cent., and the entire amount was eagerly absorbed within one day. It was a fresh instance of the sentimental response from the American investing public to any appeal from the French.

**

THE total of exports from the port of

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New York during September was $269,981,000, or $10,796,000 per business day, against a total of $271,243,000, or $10,046,000 per day in August. New York is now by far the largest exporting port in the world. The total exports from the United States in August were $510,000,000; imports, $199,247,391; for the first eight months of 1916 the exports were $3,436,280,815, against $1,515,182,157 same period in 1913. ports in eight months were $1,667,066,965, against $1,156,300,228 in 1913.

Im

in larger amounts than the preceding: 725 subscribers took over 1,000,000,000 marks each, as against 151 in the preceding loan; 19,375 took over 50,000 marks each, as against 16,762 before. The details of the French loan are not made public, but it exceeded 10,000,000,000 francs. In September the French Minister of Finance asked the Chamber of Deputies for 8,347,000,000 francs for the last quarter of 1916, 500,000,000 more than the preceding quarter. This brings the total appropriations asked since August, 1914, to 61,000,000,000 francs, ($12,200,000,000.)

THE

HE committee appointed by the British Board of Trade, of which Lord Faringdon is Chairman, to consider means of meeting the needs of British firms after the war as regards financial facilities for handling foreign business recommends the formation of an industrial bank with a capital of $50,000,000 to act as the link between home and colonial banking institutions. The committee, in discussing the advisability of the bank, recommends, among other things, that it act as agent for the Government in advancing capital to give a start to laboring men and others who would be "unwilling," after the war, "to settle down again to the humdrum of the office, and would be desirous of going to the colonies and to foreign countries to push business on their own account."

Silence Reigns at Verdun

NE of the French officers who took part in the earlier defense at Verdun, and who returned thither in the month of September, has put on record his impressions: Le Mort Homme and 304-Meter Hill still silhouette the horizon,

but, on the ground, plowed, excavated, dead, not a shell now bursts; in the distance, toward Froideterre and Souville, a few black smoke wreaths mark the work of weary gunners. When the fighting flares up toward Vaux-Chapitre and Le Reteignebois it is the French who

are the aggressors. It has taken thirty weeks, but the result has been accomplished. During these weeks the assailant of Verdun maintained a fury of aggressive such as the world had never seen, but without exhausting the strength of the defenders. A day came, even for him, formidably armed though he was, when the cost was too heavy.

Many cannon are still in line, and many divisions of troops. But the divisions are immobilized, and the guns are silent. What, asks this French officer, has Germany gained by this thirty weeks' assault? Almost nothing, he answers; on the left bank one or two hillsides, on the right bank a wood and a ruined fort. Inviolate Verdun continued firm, and even its approaches were unfallen. The victory was with the French.

That Verdun is an allied victory is the view of all the Allies; and decorations have been presented not to the intrepid General Pétain who made the defense, but to the City of Verdun itself, an honor almost unparalleled in history. First, the white enameled Cross of Saint George, presented by the Russian Emperor; then the Military Cross of England, with its white and violet ribbon, presented by King George; the French Cross of the Legion of Honor, and the French War Cross; the gold medal for valor, with the arms of the House of Savoy and the inscription "Alla città di Verdun, 1916," sent by Victor Emmanuel, King of Italy; the Serbian gold medal for military courage, on a scarlet ribbon; then, in the name of King Albert of Belgium, the Belgian Cross of Leopold I., with a ribbon of amaranthine purple; and, last, the gold medal of Montenegro, on a ribbon of the national colors, red, blue, and white. On Sept. 13 these decorations were presented to the city by the President of France.

therefore actually on the present German frontier. In drawing the boundary between the new German Empire and France, after the Franco-Prussian war of 1870, Bismarck evidently overlooked these very valuable deposits of iron ore, which a slight divergence of the line would have included within the confines of Germany, thus giving her an enormous economic advantage.

A correspondent in Germany has announced that German steel interests are determined to rectify the Iron Chancellor's oversight-to annex, after the present war, the iron mines then overlooked. The correspondent asserts that, when he was present at a meeting of German steel magnates at Düsseldorf, in the heart of the Rhenish manufacturing district, a German ironmaster, showing him a map of the deposits in the Briey district, declared that that was what Germany was fighting for; that Germany must have that additional district of Lorraine because, without it, the steel industry of Germany would live under the stress of great dangers. The German ironmaster was also very much in favor of annexing Belgium, because the possession of that country would admirably protect the Rhine provinces; Belgium would be "a pistol pointed at the heart of England."

On the other hand, it has been suggested by a distinguished American economist, Dr. Macfarlane, who studied economics at a German university, that, should the Entente Powers be successful in the present war, they could best guarantee themselves against future attacks by Germany by annexing the western German coalfields, the loss of which would so restrict Germanys' industrial development and curtail her wealth that it would be impossible for her to organize future aggressive wars. Another American authority has announced that French engineers have recently discovered large and valuable deposits of coal and iron along the Rhone, in the basin of the Loire, and in Brittany and Anjou. At present France's richest coal mines are in the northern regions occupied by German armies; but these new deposits, when opened, will make her self-supply

ing and render unnecessary further importations from England, which, since the war broke out, has been practically supplying France with both coal and iron. Meanwhile, France is preparing to make extensive use of "white coal," harnessing the waterfalls of the Pryenees and the mountains of Central France.

WHI

Jules Verne and the U-53

HILE the question of the real purpose of the activities of German submarines on this side of the Atlantic and their relation to international law are being debated it is interesting to remember that the real inspiration of this exploit comes from a Frenchman of genius who, in his own day, was considered rather a writer of "fantastical

lies," as Shakespeare has it, than a serious scientific man. It was, in fact, the submarine Nautilus, under the guidance of the relentless Captain Nemo, that made the first undersea raid on commerce, and it was precisely in the Atlantic lane of navigation, not far from Nantucket lightship, that her first exploits were accomplished; a liner was sunk there, and from among the few survivors of this liner came the unwilling visitors to Captain Nemo's submarine, who tell the great tale of "Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea."

Up to the present, therefore, it is neither the intrepid Captain of the Deutschland nor the master of the U-53, but the commander of the Nautilus, who holds the record. And it is noteworthy that, in almost every detail, Jules Verne anticipated the actual developments of submarines, though he worked out his conceptions as long ago as the time of the Franco-Prussian war. The cigarlike hull, the electric storage batteries, the renewal of oxygen by the use of chlorate of potash, all follow his lines. In one important detail only he seems to have guessed wrongly-the Nautilus carried no torpedoes and was unprovided with torpedo tubes. She rammed her victims, instead of torpedoing them. But it is interesting to note that another distinguished Frenchman, not a writer of romances, but one of the foremost naval authorities of France, has recently sug

gested that "commercial submarines like the Deutschland may easily be provided with rams, and, while showing neither guns nor torpedo tubes, may nevertheless be quite effective commerce destroyers. He thus goes back to the original idea of Jules Verne.

In passing, it may be noted that another idea of Jules Verne's, the use of hydrogen gas for the inflation of longdistance airships, is actually in use in all aircraft of the Zeppelin type. Jules Verne's great gun, the Columbiad, is still unrivaled, but it is being steadily approached by the monster guns created by the present war.

Refitting the Belgian Army THOSE who knew Belgium before the

war will remember, as one of its most characteristic sights, the little wagons drawn by dogs which brought to the early morning markets treasures of fruit and flowers and vegetables, dairy produce, cakes and loaves; a hundred products of Belgian peasant industry. It is an astonishing result of the war that these same dogs, with their little wagons, are now on the firing line, trained to bring supplies of cartridges to the Belgian machine guns. It is true that, even before the war, the Belgians had hit upon this idea, and had already trained numbers of dogs for this work.

The

Another somewhat extraordinary military development is the new Belgian military harpoon. We have all read accounts of the formidable entanglements of barbed wire-first used in the Boer war in South Africa-which each belligerent army erects before its trenches, and of the destruction of these entanglements by concentrated gun fire. service rifles of certain armies are further equipped with a wire-cutting device attached to the muzzle, and wire cutters of various forms are generally in use. But the Belgian device is the most original; a harpoon, which bears considerable resemblance to the old device of the whalers, is fired among the strands of barbed wire which protect the enemy trenches; a light steel rope attached to it is warped around a windlass, and men in the Belgian trenches set the windlass

turning, and haul over to their own trenches the whole material of the entanglement, wire, posts and all.

The new Belgian troops have recently been equipped with the French steel trench helmets, which have proved invaluable as a defense against fragments of shrapnel. The question is certain to be asked: Where do these new Belgian troops come from, seeing that practically all of Belgium is under German rule? The answer is simple. After the occupation of Antwerp, not only what remained of the Belgian Army, but great numbers of Belgian men, not then in the army, retreated to France, or escaped to England. When King Albert subsequently called for volunteers these men offered themselves for service, and the Belgian Government, installed at Le Havre, on the estuary of the Seine, set itself to establish training schools both for men and officers, the latter task being much the more difficult. It thus comes that Belgium, like Serbia, has a new army ready to fight for the reconquest of their native land, which, it must be remembered, was, before the war, one of the most densely populated in the world, having a population of 652 to the square mile, as against 310 for the German Empire, which we are accustomed to think of as densely populated.

THE

The Transylvanian Battlefield HE fighting of the Rumanian armies for some time to come is likely to cling about the passes of the Carpathians and their continuation, the Transylvanian Alps. It is, therefore, well worth while to survey these chains.

We may begin at the north at the lofty pyramid of Pietrosul, almost 7,000 feet high, at the meeting point of Bukowina, Transylvania, and Rumania; Borgo Pass, 3,900 feet high, joins Bistritz in Hungary with Kimpolung in Bukowina by an excellent road which appears to be in the hands of the Russians. From Pietrosul southward, the Carpathians form a formidable wall everywhere above 5,000 feet and often reaching 5,500; the first important pass is the Gyimes, at a height of about 3,000 feet, through which a railroad passes from Hungary to Rumania.

A little further to the southwest the Oitoz Pass is no higher than 2,775 feet. This brings us to the corner, where the name of the range changes to Transylvanian Alps. Just westward of the corner one comes, on the Transylvania side, to the town of Brasso or Kronstadt, about which there has been heavy fighting and which is joined with Bucharest by a railroad over the Tomos Pass, at a height of about 3,500 feet; this is the main door of Rumania, and just inside the door, on the slope of the mountains, is Sinaia, the Summer hill station of the Rumanian King. Further west one comes to the Red Tower Pass, where there is really a red tower, beneath which the Aluta River flows through a narrow mountain gorge from Transylvania into Rumania; a road and a railroad pass through to mania from Hermannstadt, at the very moderate height of 1,154 feet, the lowest of all the passes. Further west is the Vulkan Pass, 5,326 feet high, on whose Transylvania side is Petroseny, in the midst of the coalfields, worked, in this land of contradictions, by Frenchmen. From this point westward to the Iron Gates there are no important passes. But the Iron Gates-the name really belongs to a reef in the Danube, comparable to Hell Gate before it was blasted form a very important highway, both by water and by land.

Ru

tarians on their way to or from England and France.

At the house of a friend in Stockholm they found among their fellow-guests the German diplomatist referred to, who, according to the President of the Imperial Duma, was "both insidious and promising." He did not hide from his auditors that the situation of the Central Powers was critical, and that Germany, to escape from her difficulties, was willing to have recourse to heroic remedies. He insinuated that his Government had very exact information as to the altogether unexpected surprise which England was reserving for Russia after the war. He added that the Quadruple Entente could not exist in its present shape longer than the end of the war; that, sooner or later, Russia would see that her allies were pursuing only their own interests, and cared very little about Russia. In conclusion, he announced that the German Government was ready to reach out its hand to the Imperial Russian Government, and to begin peace negotiations; only a peace immediately concluded could save Germany and Russia from England. Recognizing the gravity of the hour Germany would make unexpected concessions to Russia. Germany was not opposed to the reconstruction of Serbia, nor to the compensation of Serbia for injuries received. Germany would, moreover, consent to settle the Polish question in a manner satisfactory to Russia. As for the question of the Dardanelles, it could be decided at once, in a manner exceedingly favorable for Russia, since it was just there that Russian and German interests were least in opposition. And commercial treaties between the two countries could be drawn up very favorable to Russia.

The President of the Duma tells us that M. Protopopoff merely listened, contenting himself with making a correction, whenever any misstatement slipped into the recital of the German diplomatist. M. Rodzianko concludes his narrative by declaring that persons for whom international treaties are "scraps of paper may be listened to, but not answered. The Russian armies, in concert with those faithful allies who every day be

IN

there were four Zeppelin raids on London, the last attacks being made by airships of a newer and larger type. On Sept. 2 one Zeppelin was struck while flying over the London district and fell in flames; in that raid two English civilians suffered death and thirteen were injured. In a raid on Sept. 23 two Zeppelins were destroyed; thirty-eight persons were killed and 125 wounded. On Sept. 24 another raid followed, when thirty-six were killed and twenty-seven wounded. On Oct. 2 there was a fourth raid, when two Zeppelins were brought down. There have been in all forty-four Zeppelin raids on London-twenty-three in 1915, twenty-one in 1916. The total killed by the raiders is 431, 1,146 wounded. No serious material damage has been done.

The Political Status of Crete

HE Entente Powers have recognized

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the Government recently established by Eleutherios Venizelos in the island of Crete, and have instructed their Consular agents to give official effect to this recognition. Thus the long, narrow island to the south of the Greek capes passes through yet one more change of government.

Crete was under the rule of Venice for 548 years, ending in 1669-four years after New York passed from under the sway of the Dutch-and it is said that the Greek statesman whom we have mentioned takes his family name from the Venetian republic. Then Crete fell under the power of the Turks, and was governed as a Turkish vilayet, or administrative province, until 1830, when it was made a dependency of the Viceroy of Egypt, being thus detached from Europe and attached to the African Con