Nelson Evening Mail TUESDAY, JANUARY 24, 1939 GERMANY'S SERIOUS POSITION

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LXXII, 24 January 1939, Page 4

Nelson Evening Mail TUESDAY, JANUARY 24, 1939 GERMANY'S SERIOUS POSITION

IT is said in Germany that certain changes in the management of the Reichsbank, consequent on what t amounts to the dismissal of Dr. Schacht, its able President, ( coupled with the appointment of ( Herr von Ribbentrop, a leading , extremist, as Foreign Minister, ( point to the fact that Germany’s j policy will be for unrestricted re- f armament coupled with “a < capital levy of 20 per cent., dis- : endowment and confiscation of 1 properties of Protestant and ' Roman Catholic Churches, and the repudiation of foreign debts.” A Government which is obliged to resort to such expedients has either given itself over to tyrannous practices or else is at a loss to know how else to raise money for meeting the expenses of the State, and may be said to be practically bankrupt. But does the matter end there? The changes are regarded as a victory for the extremists and a further advance to complete totalitarianism. The Berlin correspondent of a wellknown London journal is apprehensive of “tremendous internal differences in the Nazi Government.” The confiscation of properties of the churches will bring the State a certain amount of money, but think of the unpopularity it will bring to the political party which implements the confiscation. The repudiation of foreign debts may not affect the German Government at home, but it will have dealt its credit in foreign countries a fatal blow. Not long after the Great War ended German commercial circles solicited financial support from London, and millions of pounds were forthcoming, but most of the money was invested in an unremunerative manner, and the English investors have rued the day they responded to the appeals of Germany for financial assistance: now, it seems, that those debts may be cancelled by ' the German Government, that is to say they may be repudiated. ! The nation which resorts to such expedients is in a desperate condition. It has been said that a Government, which raises money by means of a capital levy, has well-nigh come to the end of its j financial expedients, and truly, for a capital levy “kills the goose that I lays the golden egg,” it strikes at j the source of the nation’s financial 1 stabilitv, and drives capital under- ! ground and out of sight. Just || imagine what a capital levy of 20 . i per cent, would mean in this coun- , try, and the financial condition of , Germany will be understood. But it would anpear that these danger- • ous expedients have not actuallv ’ been put into operation, though r it is feared that they will be used. * The fact that they appear to be contemplated is sufficient to show the serious state of Germany’s j financial condition. If, as seems , probable, such means are put into operation, the German nation will suffer profoundlv, and the Nazi Government will have revealed the desperate methods it is prepared to use in order to replenish its excheooer. Its exports have , fallen off by many millions and in four years its long-term internal

indebtedness has increased by £1.300,000,000. What will be the impressions which resort to j predicted expedients will create in | the civilised world, and what will be the effect on Germany’s already impaired reputation with the foremost nations? And what j will be the next step of the ex- : tremists? Not without anxiety will the world await Herr Hitler’s annual speech to the Reichstag on 30th January, a speech which was postponed last year while—a 9 subsequent developments proved —the Fuhrer completed plans for the inclusion of Austria in the Reich.