STREET COLLECTIONS IN GERMANY

Evening Star, Issue 23292, 14 June 1939, Page 11

STREET COLLECTIONS IN GERMANY

WHERE DOES THE MOHEY CO? It is one of the constant marvels how Germany pays her enormous bills for war materials. One explanation is that she has set up a new kind of flag day, which helps to pay for guns instead of butter, states a London journal. The collections, which are frequent and official, go to the German Winter llelief Organisation, and no one can pass the uniformed Nazis carrying scarlet collecting boxes without noticing them. On our ow'n flag days the unwilling contributor can look the other way, or mutter the excuse that he has subscribed already; but that will nob pass in Germany. When the Winter Relief Fund begins one of its week-end raids, lasting from Friday night till Monday, thousands of Nazis shake-the red boxes beneath the noses of the citizens in streets, trains, restaurants, hotels, and will not take No for an anwer. The purchase of a badge affords no relief from further applications. German thoroughness goes farther than that. Shopkeepers and householders receive periodical visits from the collectors, and can only free themselves from these visitations by paying down a lump sum for a “ collection free ” notice to fix on their doors. Those street collections arc one form only of swelling the funds of the W.H W., as the Winter llelief Fund is called. Others are “ Sacrifices from Wages and Salaries ” and “Subscriptions from Firms and Organisations.’’

These explain themselves by their names, and, though they masquerade as voluntary sacrifices, are compulsory levies on firms and the incomes of professional men. The workers are attacked by deductions made from their wages at a fixed rate. It would be as awkward for the involuntary subscriber to protest against this voluntary sacrifice as to turn a stony face against the street collectors. He would receive, a black mark which would take long to wipe out. The firm that boggled against this blackmail would be worse off. The best they cgn do is to give more than the subscription exacted by the,State for the fund and receive a certificate of the fact. Then there is “ One Pot Sunday,” on which, coming once a month, everyone is expected to substitute for his usual heartening midday meal, a single dish, generally of potato soup and one sausage. The difference in cost is collected by the W.H.W. Anyone so lost to his sense of duty to the State as to give a subscription and eat as usual hears of it if.he is found out. He is expected to eat the sausage thankfully, being upheld by the thought that it is the same meal as that consumed by millions.of the needy. He might be so sustained if he were satisfied that all these sacrifices went to the relief of the needy. But do they? Last year the Winter Relief Fund amassed the enormous sura of £35,000,000, and the amount Collected has gone steadily up while the numbers of the unemployed have gone steadily down. They are now below the million mark, and "the most imaginative German can hardly believe that during the winter they receive an additional £35 a head

l)r Goebbels, in answer to the doubts about those who get assistance from the Winter Relief Fund, adds to the unemployed receipts of it the war wounded, war widows, and orphans, and “persons in work who nevertheless are unable to meet the increased cost of living in the winter.” The last group includes the men at work on fortifications, motor highways, and other national undertakings. In other words, the £35,000.000 Relief Fund helps to subsidise the workmen who are employed hy the State on national undertakings and are unable to live on the wages the State pays them. ■

For three years past Germany has been spending £1,000,000,000 a year on her” armaments. In the current year the figure will be higher, and the plain fact is that Germany’s resources to pay for it. all are strained to cracking point Tho £80,000,000 seized from the Jews Was only a drop in the ocean. The £35,000,000 of the Winter Relief Fund, or what is left of it, when charity has taken its meagre due, will not go far. Every little helps. But if Germany cuts down the calamitous bill for guns some of the 235,000,000 might go for butter.