Word: armaments
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Conspirators is not an unfair word to apply to the armament makers of France--yet it must not be said with any melodramatic connotations. Probably the conspirators are not bad men at all in their personal lives and their individual contacts with society. Sir Basil Zaharoff, the passion of whose declining years is orchid culture, would probably not be aghast at the suggestion that he was the greatest murderer the world has ever known. He has heard it too often. And he may even enjoy the irony of his gifts (they took a few millions out of the hundreds...
...both. Today, for example, when political boundary lines throw most of their estates into France, but with a sufficient number of Von Wendels in reserve to manage its German affairs. (Being a De Wendell however, is no necessary barrier to th perquisites and profits still obtainable from the German armament business, as will later appear.) In 1914 the ranking member of the family was Humbert von Wendel a member of the German Reichstag, living at Hayange in Moselle, near the Saar Basin. After the treaty of Versailles he became Humbert de Wendel. A younger brother, Guy is a French Senator...
...have subsidiaries; it has members that pay dues into its central treasury either upon a basis of their tonnage production or the number of their employees. Two hundred and fifty companies--mince, smelters, metallurgical establishments. foundries--make up its membership and of these 250 companies, over 150 are armament concerns. The nominal capital stock of the member companies of the Comite totals some 7,500,000,000 francs yet some accountants have place the figure for a true valuation as high as 40,000,000,000 France. The chief officer of the Comite, the President is an man of whom...
Here the proof of the international operations of armament makers is open is no question at all. In corroboration there is spread upon the records the testimony of Deputy Pierre Etienne Flandin (scarcely a flaming Bolshevist, for he was later Finance Minister under Tardieu) to the effect that he, an artillery of the French Second Army had been expressly forbidden to bombard Briey when the chance existed, and when a ten-mile penetration of the sector would have come close to spelling German ruin. And the statement of his colleague, Deputy Barthe, in the Chamber on January 24, 1919, lost...
...have a naivete about war, shed it now: the war in no way interrupted the cordiality of the armament makers. Throughout the years from 1914 to 1918 they stayed on jolly terms; they even emerged from the war better friends than they were when they went into it. One major war-time episode in particular revealed their unshakable solidarity...