Germany is buying thousands of old motor-car radiators and accumulators in England through secret agents. White lead, nickel, chromium and other materials are extracted from the automobile parts and are being poured into Germany's furnaces—to be used in the manufacture of munitions.
Agents here arrange for shipment to Continental ports, chiefly Antwerp and Rotterdam, where they are reloaded into barges and shipped to Germany.
Last year Germany bought an average of 10000 tons of scrap metal every month from Great Britain.
Yet, while this was going on, the International Steel Convention, of which Britain is a member, was buying steel scrap an great quantities from America—and much of it was being brought to this country.
The excuse for this strange state of affairs was that the scrap sold to Germany was of an inferior quality, unsuitable for the steel furnaces of Britain.
Inquiries in Glasgow revealed that some of the car radiators and accumulaters have been shipped from Glasgow and Leith. For every automobile part shipped directly to Hamburg, it is believed that at least ten more are sent to Germany indirectly.
While figures for the export of scrap are well down on last year, there are many people who feel that no scrap should be allowed to go to Germany at all.
A Glasgow merchant who is connected with the scrap trade said: The Germans probably have some method of synthetically treating the materials and getting further valuable extracts from them. They could get antimony from the car accumulators, and I have heard it suggested that an extract to be obtained from antimony can be used in the manufacture of explosives.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.