Page:The Destruction of Poland - Toynbee - 1916.djvu/18

 himself with coal by any other channel; certain stores bought by the manufacturers without the mediation of. the German authorities have been confiscated.

The German authorities are exacting 4s. 5d. for a sack of coal which certainly did not cost them more than 2s. 25d. The coal is taken from round Dombrova, mostly from the "Saturn" Mine, which belongs to the same Lodz manufacturers to whom the coal is subsequently sold at such preposterous prices. Even the coal which the town of Lodz is compelled to supply for fuel in the buildings used by the German authorities and the German army has to be bought from those same authorities in the first instance.

For a sack of coke which formerly cost 2s. 5d. the German authorities now charge 4s. 2Jd. The police office has been making about £10 on each railway truck of coal, all in all, hundreds of thousands of pounds. The humanitarian president, von Oppen, had promised for some time to give back part of these profits, £900, to meet the needs of the town, but he soon forgot his promise.

What is the meaning. of this German corner in Polish coal? It cannot be explained by necessity, like the corner in Polish food, for Germany is a great coal-producing country herself. In time of peace she exports quantities of coal beyond her frontiers, and now that a great part of this export has been stopped by the -War, economic necessity would rather drive her to seek new markets for her own coal, and not new sources of supply. But has this policy a fiscal purpose, such as might be presumed to underlie