Germany Seeking Control Of Rhine.

New York Times 100 years ago today, August 13, 1912:
Threatens to Build a Canal Which Would Ruin Rotterdam if Holland Does Not Agree.
WANTS TO IMPOSE TOLLS
River Free to Ships of All Nations Since 1868 — Rotterdam's Import Trade Now Enormous.
By Marconi Transatlantic Wireless Telegraph to The New York Times.
    BERLIN, Aug. 12.— Information regarding Germany's latest measures in the long-pending dispute over the question of the Rhine shipping dues reaches The New York Times correspondent from a well-informed quarter, though no doubt the usual official denial is to be expected.
    Germany threatens practically to kill the Rhine as a channel for traffic between Rotterdam and the heart of the Continent unless Holland abandons her opposition to the German scheme for burdening the river shipping with heavy tolls.
    The scheme also provides for the transfer of the control of the Rhine, including the Dutch section, to an "international board," in which the balance of power is to be vested in the German States bordering on the river.
    Holland has been given to understand that if she remains obdurate Germany is prepared to construct a great new ship canal between Cologne and Braden, a distance of about 200 miles. The object and effect of such a waterway would be to paralyze the trade of Rotterdam and raise Emden to importance rivaling that of Hamburg and Bremen. The enormous oversea traffic now passing through Rotterdam and thence up the Rhine for German, Swiss, and Austrian destinations would in future be transshipped at Emden and forwarded to Dusseldorf, Mannheim, Cologne, and other great distributing points along the Rhine by way of the new canal.
    Antwerp would also be affected, although the project has been hatched more with a view to bringing press are on Holland than on Belgium. Antwerp has the largest share in exporting Rhine-shipped goods, but Rotterdam receives almost twice as great a bulk of imported goods.
    The Hamburg-American and North German Lloyd Companies already possess dock, warehouse, and harbor facilities at Emden, which are capable of unlimited extension should the canal project ever be carried out.