ROBBING THE PEOPLE

Evening Post, Volume CVI, Issue 90, 13 October 1923, Page 14

ROBBING THE PEOPLE

METHODS OP THE GERMAN.

MONEY BARON.

The May issue of the German; monthly "Die Bank" states correctly that before the war the value of-the mortgages,in Germany came to 'more than M.50,000,----000,000 or £2,500,000,000. The sayings invested in industrial and other; fixed in-' terest-bearing securities was, no dovAt', considerably larger. The total interestbearing debt carried by German industry and agriculture came to at least £5,000,----000,000. That enormous sum has been reduced to something like £5000. By the destruction of the value of the mark, the great war-makers, the nobility, and the industralists, have robbed the German nation of £5.0(10,000,000, which they have put into tfieir pockets. Germany has paid only a- small indemnity to the nominal victors. According the Reparations Commission, the Allies have received from Germany only a few hundred million pounds in cash and in kind.

But the real victors have exacted from Germany £5,000,000,000 worth of solid values. Never has a foreign conquerer been more merciless in plundering a nation than the German war-makers have been, and never has a foreign conqueror been more successful in enriohing him-

Ihe feudal and industrial barons of Germany have got practically the whole ot the land, of the mines, and of the industrial and commercial plant of the country, declares a writer in the "Daily Mail. The legitimate owners of these enormous values have been given worth-' less bits of paper. Never in the history of the world has wealth been concentiated m fewer hands. Never in the history of the world has there arisen as powerful a class as the German landowners and industrialists who work hand in nana.

\\e cannot wonder that they proceed on the assumption, "We are the^tate," that they refuse to pay taxes, and that they have told the freak and foolish Government which is at their mercy, that they will lend them a little money to tfZ IT£°? o{.} a™S handed over to them the State railways, the last item tfon6^ 7 M? has esca Ped c°nfi*^ won at their hands. The reparations problem is not how to make Germany pay, because Germany EW"* 6 SKf t n"ddKclass-has °cci totaHy impoverished. The problem con^ sists in making the great noblemen and mdustnaists pay, who even refuse Z

A position has arisen which' is far F«n 6 h? thf fc which obteinSi S F ance before the great Revolution. In midZ erS Wa T saV, least * considerable Sard of f Germany that safeguard of great wealth and great power table^tf?^' and {t "<**» ™^£ table that the German nation will hold its despoilers to account.