“GERMANS WANT PEACE”

King Country Chronicle, Volume XXX, Issue 4860, 18 June 1936, Page 5

“GERMANS WANT PEACE”

NEW ZEALANDER FOUND THEM FRIENDLY HOSTS. IMPRESSIONS OF TOUR. “Germany does not appear to me to want trouble,” Mr. L. S. Stohr, Wellington, manager of Snow, Rainger, Ltd., who has just returned from a five-month tour in which he visited England, France, Germany, Switzerland and the United States, said in an interview with “The Dominion.” Mr. Stohr said that he found Germany busy, with considerable activtivity in the factories, and there seemed to be a general atmosphere conveying - the impression that the population was more anxious to work than to fight. The largest silk mill in Europe was comparatively close to the French border, and a German had asked him if it would have been built there if the Germans wanted war or anticipated war. The French he found bitterly prejudiced against the Germans, even those who had lived for years in England, where it might have been expected that their antipathy would have been toned down as a result of the increasingly friendly feeling toward the Germans evident in England. A vast proportion of the English feeling seemed now to be pro-German. The general impression seemed to be that Hen* Adolf Hitler was sincere in his regard for peace, and there was at least a readiness to give him a chance to prove his sincerity. The German feeling toward England was also markedly friendly. Mx*. Stohr was in Germany at the time of the inoccupation of the Rhineland, and went to a German beer garden with a German host, who let it be known that he was entei’taining two-Englishmen. The band immediately played “God Save the Ring,” and followed this with the only other British tune the band leader knew, “It’s a Long Way to Tipperary.” The Germans took the occupation of the Rhineland calmljq but the French were hysterical about it. All military leave was stopped, and it seemed to the casual observer that the French would have been quite ready to “have a go” at the Germans.

German textile factories were working three shifts a day to fill orders for both intei-nal and external trade, but French industry was at present practically confined to internal trade. German external trade, however, was to some extent impeded by the policy of not allowing imports of greater volume than the exports.