DELUSIVE PLAN

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 60, Issue 249, 29 July 1940, Page 3

DELUSIVE PLAN

NEW ECONOMY IN EUROPE.

GERMAN AIMS EXAMINED. (United Press Association. —Copyright ) LONDON, July 27. The remarks addressed to foreign journalists in Berlin by tile Nazi Minister for Economics (Herr Funk), on the “new economic order’ to be imposed upon Europe were read in economic circles in England with some interest. The interview bears obvious signs of being aimed as much at the outside world, which is required to accommodate itself to Nazi-ruled Europe, as to the lesser States, which are required to co-operate in a subordinate capacity with Herr Hitler’s Greater Reich; and the part intended for othei continents is a characteristic Nazi mixture of bribery and blackmail. Outside countries are encouraged to hope for excellent trading opportune ties in post-war Germany and its subjugated European “colonies,” but business circles in those countries may fee! somewhat suspicious when they hear also that those methods will be employed which have already brought the most satisfactory trade results to Germany before and during the war. They will remember what these methods were like and that their aim was autocracy. They will have heard how countries brought within the Reich’s economic order have been exploited by the clever manipulation of the bargaining power of a gp'eat economic entity concentrating in the* hands of the State. Examples will be known to them of how the power to close the German market to a country s products or to switch German purchases elsewhere would be used to foice delivery of just those exports Germany wanted in just the quantities she desired without regard to the effect on the balance of the other country’s own economy or the rest of its export trade. Hint to United States. They will remember how, bv one device or another, the terms ol trade were turned to the disfavour of countries exporting to Germany and how in the end they would often be confronted with no alternative but to take payment for their export in goods they die! not want —the accidental surpluses of this or that branch of German industry—or watch anxiously the growth of a credit in their clearing arrangements with the Reich, which, with seeming paradox, worked to put them more and more under the necessity of economic subservience to their debtor.

That experience might befall any country which for one reason or another took advantage of the seemingly tempting opportunities to trade with Nazi Germany. In this connection an interesting press report has just been received here according to which Italy and Germany owe Mexico 4,000,000 dollars for deliveries 1 of petrol before the outbreak of war.

But, at the same time, as holding out these delusive prospects Herr Funk made it clear that any State in the New World, as in the Old World, which ventured to uphold economic ideal's other than Nazi, or pursued another economic policy would incur the dis-

favour of tlioso controlling the European economic machine from Berlin. He hinted that the United States would be expected to attune her policy to the Nazi theory. Jf what the now economic order, sketched by Herr Funk, would offer to other continents is spurious trade relations, what it would involve for the rest of Europe is economic enslavement. That is the opinion which has been frequently expressed in the British press over recent weeks, and economic experts here, reading between the lines of Herr Funk’s, carefully phrased statement, find it in full justification for the newspapers’ judgment. German economic hegemony is to be established at the cost of sacrifices in other parts of Europe. l which will disrupt economic life. The Nazis’ schemes, whether they be of Herr Funk’s or Dr. Sehacht’s devising, spell permanently reduced standards of living in Europe This reduction will bear immediately and sorely on all classes in the States of northern and western Europe. In the more backward States of the southeast, it will be felt first among the professional classes and traders. Behind Herr Funk’s phrases such as “currency problems will be solved automatically through the redistribution of labour,” “it is not intended to oast ore free foreign exchange or to create a currency union, which is a customs union,”'and “it is not intended to put Greater Germany on an entirely self-suffict&nt basis and Germany will continue to export manufactured goods”—behind such phrases lie plans for the exploitation of all other peoples for Germany’s benefit.