GERMAN FOOD PROBLEMS

Press, Volume LXX, Issue 21355, 24 December 1934, Page 15

GERMAN FOOD PROBLEMS

$ PREPARATIONS FOR WINTER STERN MEASURES AGAINST PROFITEERS (from our own correspondent.) LONDON, November 15. "We shall ascertain who has selfishly hoarded goods, and there will be ways and means of bringing theje gentry back to tne straight and narrow path." This is part of a proclamation issued by the Nazi leaders in Weimar against food hoarding. General Goering, Premier of Prussia, has issued a decree ordering all local authorities to use the sternest measures to prevent price increases. "The punishment cannot be too severe," he declares, "and I demand to be informed of all price increases immediately they are discovered, so that I personally can intervene." While Breslau butchers were cutting up joints for their customers on Saturday the secret police went from shop to shop investigating prices. Before the end of the day they ordered 24 butchers to close their shops at once for selling meat at prices above those fixed by the Food Control Board.

"No Punishment Too Hard" "At a time when everyone should make sacrifices," General Goering declared, "and when the workaday population have already shown their willingness to make such sacrifices, it is a crime that on certain sides the attempt should be made to place i profit from private capital above the general weal. For this no punish-1 ment can be too hard." '-, General Goering instructs local ] police authorities continually to watch the prices of provisions, and, invites anyone finding a "case of profiteering" to telegraph to him ; personally at the Prussian Ministry j for the Interior. This sudden appli- ' cation of the socialist part of the j National Socialist programme is strongly resented by thousands of small shopkeepers, who are already . disappointed because Herr Hitler j has not kept his much-vaunted pro- j mise to close the multiple stores. I " The Wicked foreigners " There is a 15 per cent, shortage! of food in Germany, it is reported, j "Foreign trade lias withered through this shortage of the blood of com-1 merce," writes the correspondent of jthe "Daily Express." "German traci!ers now barter with foreign traders. They sell Rhine and Moselle wine to Scottish distillers to obtain [whisky, for instance. Trade cannot ;be counted upon to bring in much | foreign currency during this winter, i But no nation on earth can tighten its belt as can these Germans, when the motive is strong enough. To-day they believe that a circle of nations I has come together to boycott their | trade and to starve them. Hitler has told them so. He has exhorted them to pull together and sacrifice so that the hopes of those enemies may be defeated. "Every conceivable measure is being taken to sec that economy is practised in the consumption of food. The strictest supervision is exercised in cutting down by ounces the amount of production of rawmaterial that is imported from abroad. Every invention and adaptation is being employed to manufacture within German frontiers substitutes for the things normally bought abroad. "One sees cars travelling along the streets with little contraptions on the back in which fuel is being manufactured from wood. Nearly all the buses in Berlin are running on benzole or gas made in Germany. Clothes are being made of synthetic materials."

Herr Hitler has appointed a special Price Commissar, and for the office has chosen Dr. Gordeler, the Mayor of Leipzig, who was Price Commisar in 1931 and 1032, when Dr. Bruning was Chancellor. The Commissar is to be directly responsible to Herr Hitler, and this fact ajone shows the grea timportance which the Fuhrer attaches to the campaign against rising prices.