Timely Topics

Northern Advocate, 6 September 1939, Page 6

Timely Topics

While Herr Hitler, with moving self-effacement, is announcing that Adolf Hitler Platz in Munich shall henceforth be known a£

AXIS PARTNERS.

Mussolini Platz, some of the current comments by German writers on

various aspects of Italian life are instructive, says the “Spectator.” The Berlin paper “Die Bank” publishes an article extremely critical of Italian finances, pointing out that there are three great tasks whose execution must inevitably drain the Exchequer—the organisation of Albania, rearmament, and the self-sufficiency programme—which must involve either increased taxation, with a proportionate reduction in purchasing-power, or inflation. At the same time the military periodical, “Militar Wochenblatt,” after reproducing certain exuberant Italian estimates of the potentialities of the Italian army, observes caustically that “in the reality of war, when an enemy of equal calibre would have to be reckoned with, these exceedingly optimistic views would be liable to suffer very considerable diminutions and surprises.” S « 2 jc 1 “Germany’s soft-coal consumption 'in 1938 was more than 70 per cent. | greater than in 1932, and hard-coal 1 e o n s u motion

RAW MATERIALS.

U U U b U XUjJUUU for the iron industry was three

times greater. Germany’s coal im-

ports from Great Britain in January, 1938, were 288,833 tons, but in January last they were 350,697 tons.

Imports of coke from Britain rose

from 8234 tons in January, 1938, to 12,972 tons in January, 1939. “We are increasing our supplies of the raw materials to make armaments for the opponents of our own people. Examination shows that the British Empire, France, Belgium, and their colonies have given Germany 45 per cent, of her supplies of iron ore and iron ore containing manganese. In 1933 at the start of the Nazi regime Germany’s total imports were 4,571,000 metric tons, and in 1938 they were 10,550,000'metric tons from the British Empire, France, Belgium, and their colonies. Germany’s imports of pig-iron and scrap in 1939 were nearly four times greater than in 1936.” —Mr Ebby Edwards, General Secretary of the Miners’ Federation, in a recent speech.