CONDITIONS IN GERMANY.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVI, Issue 204, 29 August 1935, Page 20

CONDITIONS IN GERMANY.

It Las been rightly said that statistics can be used to prove anything and nowhere is this more true than where i statistics are the tools of an unscrupu- | lous Government, such as that which ! ruthlessly controls modern Germany. j Mr. K. W. Schmidt, at it meeting of tho Auckland Travel Club recently reported in your paper, paints a ! pleasant picture of modern Germany, I but one who reads the meagre news ' items which filter through in spite of tho strict Nazi censorship, has much difficulty in reconciling these with Mr. Schmidt's remarks. Consequently, when Mr. Schmidt tells us that unemployment has been reduced from 7,000,000 in 19:52 ! to 1,600,000 two months ago we must ; remember that men put into unemployment camps and such created jobs, which arc a tremendous strain on the resources '■ of the Government, are considered as no ■ longer unemployed. How great this I drain is can be. judged by the precarious i position in which Germany stands financially, as recently indicatgd by the threatened resignation of Dr. Schacht. Actually the unemployment position is growing worse and worse in Germany, due largely to the boycott of German goods in England and the United States by every right-thinking person, the extent of which boycott we in New ! Zealand know little. tight lias this ! become that it has created a shortage of foreign credits for German purchases of raw materials. This again has created further unemployment, as mills caniiot run without the raw products which are their life blood. The trains may run as fast in Germany as Mr. Schmidt says, but what avails that when 95 per cent of the people have not the amount of fare to ride in them nor even the means of buying sufficient nourishing food. Can Mr. Schmidt deny that to the average factory worker meat is a luxury which he is lucky to have once a week and that butter which costs about 2/(3 per pound is quite beyond his means? i K. LAMB. »