MUNITIONS INQUIRY

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XXIV, Issue 235, 17 September 1934, Page 9

MUNITIONS INQUIRY

Dealings With Germany SMUGGLED FROM HOLLAND By Telegraph—Press Assn. —Copyright WASHINGTON, September 10. The Questioning of the Dupont Co. by the Munitions Investment Committee concluded to-day with evidence that on February 1, 1933, the company entered Into a contract with Jungo Geira, described as an “international spy,” for him to act as its agent for the sale of military explosives to the German Government. The company's executive committee had torn the contract up, but later made a new agreement with Geira which stipulated, however, that no contracts would be entered into for the rearmament 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 were smuggled Into Germany from Holland. Most of the equipment went to the Nazis before Herr Hitler’s rise to power, but Communists and other private armies received some.

Mr Lammot Dupont, president of the Dupont de Nemours Co., told the committee that he had reports indicating that Germany was making war explosives in considerable quantities in violation of the Versailles Treaty. At this stage censorship was placed by the committee on a sheaf of cables apparently relating to a successful effort by the Dupont Co. and its British ally, Imperial Chemical Industries Ltd. to keep a German concern from building a power plant in Argentina. “If those cables are made public,” said Mr Stephen Raushenbush, secretary of the committee, “it might mean actual destruction of life and property.”

Senator Bennett Clark (Missouri. Democrat) asserted that the rise of Hitler had been financed indirectly by French munition manufacturers to stimulate their own sales of arms.