FOREIGN VESTED INTERESTS

Evening Post, Volume XC, Issue 71, 22 September 1915, Page 8

FOREIGN VESTED INTERESTS

MISSION OF AN AUSTRALIAN GERMAN MONOPOLY IN METALS. (BT TELEGRAPH.— SPECIAL TO THE POST.) AUCKLAND, This Day. Tbe appointment of a Royal Commission to enquire into foreign holdings in Australasia is suggested by Mr. O. C. Beale, who was a through passenger to Sydney by the R.M.S. Makura after a year's absence in the Old World. In impressing the wisdom of such action ; Mr. Beale expressed the opinion i that if Australia took the lead other | British Dominions would follow. He said j that in British South Africa Germans held vested interests to the extent of £200,000,000, representing an annual proj duction of £12,000,000. Why should not i this matter be enquired into by a Commission with a view to sequestration j Such action had already been taken in ■ France (which country Mr. Beale has recently visited), with the result that all German and Austrian firms had been plainly tabulated. He hoped that New Zealand as well as Australia would take up the suggestion. The matter of German monopoly in the metal market was referred to with some -feeling by Mr. Beale, who said that before the war he headed a deputation to the Hon. Mr. Tndor, Federal Minister for Customs, asking for an export duty on metaL ' Unfortunately, their representations were rejected. Mr.- Beale said that concentrates had been leaving New South Wales in German ships to be treated in Germany and then shipped back to Australia in refined form. Half of th« concentrates whiph left the Commonwealth were destined to be thrown aside as waste material after refining, and the query was, who paid for the camagi of that waste material, Australia or Germany? Mr. Beale said he had previously pre» dieted that the metal which was being allowed to fall into foreign hands would come back to them as bullets through the hearts of their young men, and that prediction was proving true. Mr. Beale visited Switzerland a couple of months ago, and he there learned that the conditions which he had feared were an actual fact. While he was there certain railway tenders which were called showed that the metal produced by Germany from Australian concentrates was available at £54 per ton, whereas Great Britain was paying £105 for zinc in America. The Germans held contracts for the output of certain Australian mines up to the year 1920, with a special stipulation that an outbreak of war should not nullify them, and although we had been at war with j Germany for over a year these contracts had not yet been vitiated. Mr. Beale intends making further representations to the authorities on his return to Australia.