The daily Nome industrial worker., 1916-12-15
PEACE TALK.

While the nations are taking peace and the newspapers are dis cusging quite vainly the terms, the war will probably wag on just the same for another spell.
 The reason for this is to be sought in the causes of the war.
 To admit that Germany's dis avowal of the rights of conquest over the territory the Teutons have gained since the war began is quite generous, and that the failure of the allies to accept such terms Is foolish in the extreme, is merely to show that no proper conception is held ot the origin of this war. The great war did not begin over territorial squab- bIes. It had it's origin rooted deep in the commercial struggles of the nations.
 Everything else was only an indi- rect issue and an issue only as It affected the ultimate question in- volved: commercial supremacy.
 Consequently since Germany's com mercial greatness is not at all ai- fected, since financially and commer- eially that nation is in position or absolute solidity, the war however It would end, can end at the present time only with an absolute German victory.
 So it is that the Entente nations appear to repudiate really generous terms because those terms only in yolve the territorial conquest by the Central Powers.
 The fortunes of this war are not to be written on maps but in count ing house ledgers.
 The final settlement is to be made on the profit or loss side of those ,edgers, and not in the annexation or absorption of a geographical en- tity.
 And because, although fighting two years, the German industrial and commercial position is infinitely stronger than when the war began, peace just now has little chance of being regarded with favor by the Entente.
 We have become so accustomed to wars as settled by the conquest of this or that territory, and always by the territorial aggrandizement of the victor. that we cannot wean ourselves from the notion that this war is to be any different.
 But this is the first great war under the capitalist economy, and it is to be finally set tied by regulation of the final flow of profits to this or that nation, and not the acquisition of territory by any one of them.
 German industrial and financial organization is intact. The years spent at war have been fruitful in invention and in industrial progress little short of wonderful. Low grade ores are reduced at a profit; low grade coal is compelled to surrender heat units, the highest grade has heretofore hardly attained. Benzol substitutes for gasoline have been perfected beyond any combustion perfection gasoline is capable. Syn ahetic glycerine, synthetc rubber and synthetic fats in infinite variety have become accomplished facts. Textile experiments have been no less successful and one trade journal has a representative who visited Germany say that the achievements in this line with substitutes for the usual raw material are so incredible, that he could not describe them be- cause his description would be de- rided as impossible.
 German steel works have reached a perfection in production and qual. ity of output. in labor saving ma chinery and efficiency that the total product has. other things being the same, more than trebled since the war began.
 German shipping is intact. The German marine losses are relatively negligible. Although the ships lie in friendly neutral ports or in the home ports they are still instantly available for German commerce when the war ends.
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