THE H.B. TRIBUNE. WEDNESDAY, SEPT. 12, 1923. GERMANY COMING ROUND.

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XIII, Issue 229, 12 September 1923, Page 4

THE H.B. TRIBUNE. WEDNESDAY, SEPT. 12, 1923. GERMANY COMING ROUND.

Unless “usually well informed” newspaper correspondents are being badly misled by apparent developments in Berlin, French action in the Ruhr is beginnng to show definite signs of fruition. For some good few days now there have been cumulative journalistic evidences of this that can scarcely be all without foundation. Herr JStresemann, the new German Chancellor, is obviously taking a practical view of the situation, and has come to the conclusion that, with the French at any rate, the policy of bluff by assuming an appearance of incapacity to fulfil obligations must cease. He is no doubt realising that the artificial conditions created for the purpose of maintaining this policy have reached a crisis now which really does threaten Germany’s economic life. He sees her becoming little short of a by-word among the more honestly disposed commercial! nations of the world, and no doubt senses that a further persistence in it will militate against re-admis-sion on acceptable terms among its tradinig communices. He has intelligence enough to understand that the estimation in which she is now, tor the tune being, held may be apt to crystallise into a permanency that it will prove difficult to dissolve again.

Herr btresemann knows that Germany requires outside financial assistance to grease her practically undamaged, indeed greatly improved, industrial machinery, and understands that this is much more likely to be forthcoming if she shows herself to be able to repay the loans she must seek, and to deal honestly with the lenders. Repudiation, as distinguished from actual insolvency, he knows to be a most dangerous thing for either nation or individual desirous of continuing to trade in old markets, and hence his desire to rehabilitate Germany in the eyes of the commercial and financial world. He will doubtless make all use possible to Germany’s advantage of the apparent chaos which his predecessors in Government have caused, but will endeavour to establish a fresh basis upon which renewed confidence may be gradually built up. The game of duplicity that has been played he realises to have been an extremely hazardous one, and as with the horse that has for a long time been running “stiff,” he hopes that the appearance of a new jockey in the saddle will be accepted as sufficiently accounting for a sudden “reversal of form.” There seems to be no doubt that France adopted the proper method of bringing Germany to book. The only fear may be that the opposition

she has quite unwarrantably been set to overcome, may dispose her to an arbitrariness that would not have arisen had Germany but submitted with a good grace. For this opposition British aloofness from France in the measures she took has been very largely responsible. It may be hoped, however, that the French Prime Minister is playing her own game back on Germany in the form of a,little bluster as to intentions for the future. In any event, he has the bitter experience not only of his own country, but of others, to justify him in insisting upon tangible and enforceable guarantees for Germany’s fulfilment of any fresh proposals she may make for an ultimate settlement. Germany’s attempt to impress the world with the sacrifices she has been making in pursuing a policy of would-be dignified passive resistance is not at all likely to have succeeded. As a recent writer on the subject has said, it is true that the German people in the Ruhr have not been producing, but, all the same, they have been working. They have been working so that production will be increased when the occupation is at an end, or when the order comes for production to be resumed. This is the conclusion, too, of the American Commercial Attaches at Paris and Berlin, as the result of a visit they paid to the Ruhr. In their report those attaches state that by the joint action of the German Government, the unions, the industrial employers, the municipalities, and the railroads, the working population of the Ruhr has been extending galleries of coalmines without mining coal, repairing and building tho roads, railroads, canals, and terminals, and in various other ways devoting to betterments work that would otherwise have gone into production. Inasmuch as a good portion of this work was paid for by special subventions from the Government, it is clear that the loss of immediate profits to the industries in the Ruhr has been compensated for by the increased productive capacity given to the plants and equipment in that region. The same story, the New York “Times” points out, comes from other parts of Germany. While financial affairs ]pave been going from bad to worsd, and saving has become impossible except by investing in real estate and factories, the natural thing to do has been to re-make all that could be renovated and to put into new equipment and new undertakings what would otherwise have gone into production. All this means that when the currency chaos has ended and the nation resumes production its capacity will be materially enhanced. German property has changed hands, and some German fortunes have been destroyed, but the wealth-producing machinery is in better shape than ever.