GERMANY’S COLONIES

Dominion, Volume 30, Issue 115, 9 February 1937, Page 3

GERMANY’S COLONIES

Dr. Schacht’s Plea Dr. Schacht, Minister of Economics and president of the Reichsbank, speaking recently at Frankfort-on-Main, made a vigorous demand for the return of Germany’s former colonise. “Germany has too little room for its population,” he said. “This nation has made every effort—and certainly far greater efforts than any other nation —to .obtain from the little space it possesses the supplies necessary for safeguarding its life. “Despite all these efforts, the space is insufficient. The lack of industrial rawstuffs is even greater than that of foodstuffs.

“The maintenance of the German people cannot be guaranteed by commercial agreements of any sort. . The solution of the present difficulties is an allotment of colonies.

“Peace in Europe, and therefore in the rest of the world, depends on whether the closely packed masses in Central Europe are permitted the possibility of living, or not.

“If the German Reich still had its pre-war frontiers, provision for the food of the population would be guaranteed.”

He emphasised that he did not say this to promulgate any idea of warlike revenge, and added: “The facts show that her losses in the war dealt Germany a blow which must remain a revolutionary element in the European situation, if help is not found elsewhere.

“Germany cannot derive from her present territory the full amount of food necessary for the German people.” Dr. Schacht urged that one could not take from a country all its foreign properties and its colonies and then load it. with enormous debts without reducing its balance to a hopeless condition.

He referred to the “new element of uncertainty” caused by the sanctions clauses of the charter of the League of Nations, which meant that the supply of food and war materials depended on the views of certain foreign diplomats. and on the favour of the dominating Powers who could distribute these things or not.

“It must be clear to every politician,” he said, “that no great, self-conscious nation can freely accept these consequences.” Dr. Schacht said that when he discussed the situation with a

foreign diplomat. the latter “gave me the advice to restrict tlie birth-rate in Germany.” This, said the Minister of Economics, was particularly 'ironical because the country whose diplomat gave him this advice was the one probably possessing the greatest possible opportunities for expansion and existence. In conclusion he said: “I will not maintain that a satisfactory solution of the colonial question would take away as by magic all Germany’s needs of r'awstuffs. but if she were still not deprived of her colonies the development of the production of colonial raw materials would be undertaken energetically. with German work and with capital and credit in German currency, and far more food and rawstuffs would lie produced than is the case under the present mandates of those areas.”