In modern times the uses of copper in war material are innumerable, and there is practically no alterna¬tive mineral. Take, for example, the cartridge cases. Those for rifles, with alloy of copper and zinc, are so thin that the metals must be very pure to ensure against flaws. Those for quick-firing guns must be exact to a five-hundredth part of an inch and gas-tight. On shells copper bands encircle the steel. Copper wire is also necessary for field telephones and dynamos. No wonder that during the Great European War Germany was paying £160 or more in gold for every ton of copper in any form delivered over the German frontier, although in Britain its value was only £60.

To wonder also that the Allies were taking every precaution to keep copper from reaching Germany. For even in normal times the annual imports of that country in copper had been over 250*000 tons, while her own production of the metal was a little over 25,000 tons, and that of Austria about 4000 tons.
So important was the commerce in copper that there was almost a disagreement between England and the United States over the search of neutral ships for copper, and the British Foreign Minister based a portion of his reply to the American protest upon the extra¬ordinary increases of imports in copper by Italy and other neutral countries close to Germany.

The United States, indeed, out of a world total of over 1,000,000 tons, exports over a half of this amount annually in copper, and the control of the copper market is practically in the hands of three firms.
Without copper no ammunition, and the greater the ammunition used the greater is the part which copper plays in its continuance or cessation. Before the Great World War broke out in 1914 Germany had recognised this fact and had laid in huge stores of copper, but so inadequate were these thought to be when the war was in progress, because of the extra¬ordinary amount of ammunition used, that copper was sought eagerly by that country in any quarter and at any price. It was smuggled across the frontier in cotton bales and orange boxes ; it was requisitioned from every factory in Belgium, and copper saucepans,, crucifixes, holy-water basins and handles from railwav stations were pillaged from that unfortunate countrr by the Germans ; and, according to the Frankfurter Zeitung, even the electric light installations in Germany were dismantled for the sake of their copper. This was it reserved for copper in the twentieth centurv to ‘ determine the fate of empires.