The Birmingham age-herald., 1915-08-09
ENGLISH VIEW OF COTTON
From the London Daily Mall.

From the London Daily Mail.
 XV1HEN shell, whether high ex-
 w plosive or shrapnel is manufae-
 W tured two separate and entirely different charges are used. One is the charge necessary to send the shell from the gun and launch it over the trenches, and the other IS to burst it and sea. CT the shot and shell over our men after it has reached the spot chosen. Now take away or capture the propelling charge md the gunner will have to throw his shell or use hand grenades, which are impract- cable for long distances.
 A number of times great glee has been expressed when our Tommies have, by risking their lives, captured a few hun dreds or thousands of shells, but few have realized that while this has been done by the men who are doing their duty oth- CTS in this country have failed in theirs by allowing the raw material to go free ly to the enemy for the manufacture of further supplies.
 This material is cotton, one of the few materials which the Germans cannot do without Not shell is fire dthat is not propelled by cotton and not a machine gun or rifle bullet which has killed and wounded our brave men that has not been sent on it's way by cotton. The amount of this raw material used every day is colos- sal Lloyd George stated in the House on April 21 that one of the surprises of amount of ammunition used, and that | around Neuve Chapelle almost as iluch ammunition was spent by our artillery as during the whole of the two and three quarter years of the Boer war" mod crate computation of 300,000 shots fired by the Germans, Austrains and Turks from their ordinary three-inch field guns every "A hours necesstates a consump- tion of 800 tons of cotton. If one-tenth of the 300,000 shots is fired by, say. six inch guns the expenditure of cotton is 300 tons every 24 hours. Add to this 100 tons day for the enormous expenditure of ammunition for machine guns and for the millions of rifles in use, and we get total of 1000 tons of cotton consumed a day.
 Yet, although these facts must have been known a few weeks after the outbreak of war. our enemies have been allowed to import freely.
 It is now generally recognized that the enemy had at the outbreak of war suf- ficient cotton to last about a year-that is. at the rate of expenditure which has been going on.. It therefore follows that if cotton had been made absolute contra band and all supplies stopped. Germany would either have had to economize her raw material, and consequently her ann muniton, or use substitutes. But through the negligence and dilatoriness of our gov ernment this step was not taken. Econ omy would have been responsible for the saving of thousands of our valuable lives and would have given us time to put our house in order. The use of substitutes | would have suited us just as we'll They would either have had recourse to the
 use of the old black gunpowder, to collect up all the shirts and cotton articles in
 daily use. or to fall back on wood pulp. | Either of these procedures would place
 tho enemy in a serious position. In con-
 sidering these points it must not be lost
 sight of that the modern explosives fac
 tory is run on highly technical lines. and
 for its successful running is absolutely
 dependent on the regularity of the quality
 of the raw materials. The slightest devia-