This is also indicated by the expansion of her paper money and her efforts to maintain the gold basis under that paper.
As this is regarded as a life-and-death struggle for Germany, the jewelry in the Empire must go into the melting-pot.
I can well credit the reports of copper household utensils and building materials going into the melting-pot for the copper of war.
And of rubber, for which there is no substitute, I hear that above three dollars a pound is being bid in Germany, or about four times the price in the United States.
Still, the scarcity of gold, copper, gasolene, or rubber, or all combined, might not force Germany to sue for peace.
What I give a final verdict on is the tremendous human sacrifice that is exhausting both Austria and Germany.

I do say from good sources that in the first twenty weeks of the war the German casualties--wounded, prisoners, missing, and killed--were above 1,700,000, while Austrian casualties are now approaching a million and a half.
In the first six months of the year Germany and Austria will have suffered not less than three million casualties.

Of course, more than half these people are wounded, who may go back to the firing line.

But the three hundred thousand and more dead will never go back; and many vitally wounded and many cripples will be hereafter useless in peace or war; and the prisoners that are exchanged with France through Geneva are under pledge and mutual government agreement not to take up arms again.
I have also more confidence in the Russian position, numbers, supplies, and strategy than is generally possessed in America.
We hear in the press reports of generals at the head of the armies in Russia and France.

We do not hear of the wonderful younger generals that war is developing, and who are coming forward more rapidly there than from any similar developments under the bureaucracy of Germany.
The two greatest military strategists the war has developed are not in Germany or England.