THE H.B. TRIBUNE THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 13, 1934 GERMANY’S POOR CREDIT.

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XXIV, Issue 232, 13 September 1934, Page 6

THE H.B. TRIBUNE THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 13, 1934 GERMANY’S POOR CREDIT.

It is one of Germany’s chief misfortunes that she has earned a reputation that makes it difficult to accept her word, whether it be with respect to representations of existing fact or to undertakings for the future. Ever since, in complete contempt of her own written pledge, she tore up the treaty that guaranteed Belgium’s neutrality and integrity her many successive Governments have been under suspicion of a lack of good faith that has unhappily for herself been proved, in not a few eases, to have had good foundation. It is this, combined with continual evidences of political instability, that has stood so much in the way of her making the economic recovery which her fully recognised industrial capacity might have otherwise assured her. Once the bitterness engendered by the war had abated Germany, under an entirely new governmental system, might very easily by pursuing a straight-forward course have won the confidence and sympathetic consideration even of her erstwhile enemies on the field of battle. Practical indications of this have been quite plentiful, especially on the part of Great Britain and the United States, from whom, indeed, she has actually received a very great deal of material and moral support. But for the devious ways she has chosen to tread this spirit qf good will might well have spread among the other nations of the world very much to her advantage. As things stand at present she is almost everywhere held suspect, an uneasy feeling that has been only intensified by the attitude and actions of the Dictator to whose rule she has so gladly submitted herself. She lias, in short, completely failed to recognise that the re-establishment of a reputation for good faith was an essential preliminary to a restoration to a place atiioug the Great Powers that she might well occupy with honour to herself and great benefit to to the world. In other words, the lessons that should have been learned from the Great War, whether from the causes that originated it or from the consequences that followed upon it, have seemingly been entirely lost not only upon her rulers but upon her people also. The one among the European nations to which the preservation of peace is really of the greatest importance, she has also been the one that has done most to jeopardise it. 'With a recent record such as this, there can be little wonder at the hesitation that is shown about accepting at face value Germany’s declaration that, owing to lack of exchange facilities due to loss of foreign trade, she is unable to discharge even obligations incurred in connection with ordinary, everyday commercial transactions. This disability, it has also to he noted, is finally dis covered and annonneed only when her traders have piled up debts in Great Britain alone to the extent of some I wo million sterling. This. 1“ the wav recalls the fact that

when she decreed war in 1914 an entirely abnormal heap of German commercial paper was found to be outstanding in London that would, of course, never have been redeemed had victory, as Germany was then fully confident, gone the other way. So far as concerns the genuineness of the alleged exchange difficulty it has, of course, to be recognised that Germany’s export trade has markedly fallen away. Official figures published for the first six months of the euwent calendar year show an adverse trade balance on the imports side of some 216 million marks, the equivalent, on a gold basis, of about £ll million sterling, This contrasts with the figures for the corresponding halfyear of 1933, when there was a balance of 291 million marks on the other side, making altogether a difference of 507 million marks, or about £2s| million sterling. These, however, are really not very stupendous figures, having regard to the aggregate volume of trade. It is, moreover, to be noted that the 1934 exports to Great Britain were substantially greater than those of 1933. Yet Germany says she cannot pay up arrears owing for imports from that country. Then, not a little of Germany’s loss of foreign markets is attributable to a widespread Jewish boycott organised in reprisal for the treatment meted out to members of that raee by Herr Hitler, while a great falling oil' in trade with Russia is assignable to political doubts and differences, Most significant of all 'is the fact that, while pleading inability to pay for ordinary imports, German speculators, if not the German Government itself, have been able to arrange exchange wherewith to buy up heavily depreciated German Government and other stocks on foreign bourses. It would thus be not altogether easy to excite any real sorrow for Germany, even if the representations made by her Government were proved true.