File No. 641.00/10
Monthly trade report by the Consul General at London (Skinner), September 9, 19152
The trade and navigation returns of the United Kingdom covering eight months of the year, including August, show that the foreign trade has recovered substantially from the conditions revealed in returns for the month of August 1914.... It is especially interesting to observe that the severe check to exports, particularly of foreign and colonial products, which marked the first months of the war, has been overcome, and the reexports of these articles now show heavy increases which began in April last and have shown signs of accentuation in each succeeding month....
A further index to the steadily increasing control of certain classes of trade by British merchants will be found in statistics setting forth the quantities of the principal articles of imported merchandise remaining in the bonded warehouses of the United Kingdom or entered to be warehoused on August 31, 1915, as compared with the quantities on the same date of 1914 and 1913:
| 1913 | 1914 | 1915 | |
| Chicory (cwt.) | 11,000 | 7,000 | 92,000 |
| Cocoa, raw (lb.) | 23,874,000 | 32,223,000 | 56,461,000 |
| Cocoa, prepared (cwt.) | 8,000 | 11,000 | 9,000 |
| Coffee (cwt.) | 299,000 | 416,000 | 888,000 |
All the articles of trade already referred to are exported under permits from the British Government itself, which, while forbidding exports from neutral countries by various measures with which the public has become familiar, has made it possible that the trade of British merchants in the same goods shall increase steadily.... The figures show that the exports under the heads given are abnormal [Page 556] and can only be attributed to the application of war measures intended, in the first instance, for defensive purposes, but extending practically very great advantages to British traders....