NEW ECONOMIC ORDER

Grey River Argus, 30 July 1940, Page 8

NEW ECONOMIC ORDER

GERMAN PLANS London Criticism [British Official Wireless.] RUGBY, July 27. The remarks addressed to the foreign pressmen in Berlin by the Nazi Minister of Economics, Herr Funk, on the “New Economics Order” to be imposed upon Europe, have been read in economic circles in England with some interest. The interview bears obvious signs of being aimed as much at the outside world which is required to accommodate itself to a Naziruled Europe .as to lesser States which are required to co-operate in a subordinate capacity with Herr Hitler’s Greater Reich, and the part intended for other continents is a characteristic Nazi mixture of bribery andj blackmail. 1 Outside countries are encouraged to hope for excellent trading opportunities in the post-war Germany and its subjugated European “colonies.” But business circles in those countries may feel somewhat suspicious when they hear, also, that methods will be employed which have already brought most satisfactory trade results to Germany before and during the war. They will remember what these methods were like, and that their air was autocracy. They will have heard how countries brought, within the Reich’s economic order have been exploited by clever manipulation of the bargaining power ol a great economic entity concentrated in the hands of the State. Examples will be known to them of how power to close the German market to a country’s products, or to switch German purchasers elsewhere, would be used to force delivery of just those j exports Germany wanted in just the quantities she desired, without regard to the effect on the balance of the other country’s own economy, or the rest of its export trade. They will remember how, by one device or another, terms of trade were turned to the disfavour of countries exporting to Germany and how, in the end, they would often be confronted with no alternative but to take payment for their export in goods they did not want —accidental surpluses of this or that branch of German industry- oi watch anxiously the growth of a credit in their clearing arrangements with the Reich, which, with seeming paradox, worked to put them more and more under the necessity of economic subservience to their debtor. That experience might befall any country which, for one reason or another, took advantage of seemingly tempting opportunities to trade with Nazi Germany. In this connection, an interesting press report has just been received here, according to which Italy and Germany owe Mexico City four million dollars for deliveries of petrol before the outbreak of war. But at the same time as holding out these delusive prospects, Herr Funk made it clear that any state in the New World, as in the old, which ventured to uphold economic ideals other than Nazi ones, o" pursued another economic policy, would incur the disfavour of those controlling the European economic machine from Berlin. He hinted that the United States would be expected to attune its policy to the Nazi theory . If what the new economic order sketched by Herr Funk would offer to other continent-; is spurious trade relations. v/hot it would involve for the rest of Europe is economic enslavement. That is an opinion which has been frequenGv expressed in the British press over recent weeks;, and economic experts here, reading between the lines of Herr Funk’s carefully prepared statement, find in it a full Justification for the newspapers’ judgment. German economic hegemony is to be established at the cost of sacrifices in other parts of Europe, which will disrupt economic life. The Nazis’ schemes, whether they be of Herr Funk’s or Dr. Schacht’s devising, spell permanently reduced standards of living in Europe. This reduction will bear immediately and sorely on all classes in States of northern and western Europe. In more backward States in the south-east it would be felt first among professional classes and traders. Herr Funk’s phrases were: “Currency problems will be solved automatically through the redistribution of labour-” “It is not intended to restore free foreign exchange or to create a currency union which is a customs union.” “It is not intended to put Greater Germany on entirely a self-sufficient basis. Germany will continue to export manufactured goods.” Behind such phrases are like plans for exploitation of all other peoples for Germany’s benefit.