ARMAMENTS SALES

Greymouth Evening Star, 17 September 1934, Page 3

ARMAMENTS SALES

CONTRACT WITH “SPY.” [BY CABLE —PBES3 ASSN. —COPYBIGHT.] WASHINGTON, September 14. The questioning of the Dupont Armament Company by the Senate Munitions Investigation Committee concluded to-day with evidence that on February 1, 1933, the Dupont Company entered into a contract with one Jango Geira, who is described as an “international spy,” to act as its agent for the sale of military explosives to the German Government. The Company’s executive committee had torn that contract up, but they later made a new agreement with Geiia, which stipulated, however, that no contracts should be entered into for the re-armament of Germany except with the approval of the United States Government. It was further revealed that considerable quantities of American small arms and machine guns had been smuggled into Germany from Holland. Most of this equipment went to Nazis before Hitler's rise to power, but the Communists and other private armies also received some. Mr Lammont Dupont, the President of the E. 1. Dupont De Nemours Company told the Committee that he had reports indicating that Germany is making war explosives in considerable quantities in violation of the Versailles Treaty. At this stage a censorship was placed by the Committee on a sheaf of cables, apparently relating to a successful effort by the Dupont Company and their British ally, the Imperia,! Chemical Industries Limited, to keep a German concern from building a powder plant in Argentina.. “If those cable were made public,” said Mr Stephen Raushenbush, Secretary of the Committee, “it might mean the actual destruction of life and property.” Senator Bennett Clark, of Missouri, Democrat, asserted that the rise of .Herr Hitler had been financed indirectly by French munitions manufacturers. to stimulate their own arms sales.

CHINA'S DENIAL. (Recd. September 17, 10.30 a.in.) SHANGHAI, September 16. An emphatic denial backed by a statement giving accounting of the expenditure up to date, was made to-day by 11. 11. Kung, Finance Minister, in refutation, of the statements made to the Washington Arms Inquiry, that China used a large proportion of the proceeds of the huge cotton and wheat loan, of 20,000,000 dollars from America. for the purchase of arms and ammunition. He stated that the proceeds had been and would be devoted to reconstruction work, 'twelve million had already been used for rehabilitation work in territories recaptured from the Communists, for famine and Hood relief.