ARMS INQUIRY

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXI, Issue 21907, 17 September 1934, Page 9

ARMS INQUIRY

SUPPLIES FOR GERMANY

NAZIS AND COMMUNISTS AN "INTERNATIONAL SPY"' ALLEGATIONS OF WITNESSES By Telegraph—Press Association—Copyright (Received September IG, 5.5 p.m.) WASHINGTON., Sept. 15 At to-day's sitting of the Munitions Investigating Committee of the Senate evidence was given that Germany apparently is piling up large stores of war materials in violation of the Treaty of Versailles.

Mr. Lamott du Pont, president of E. I. du Pont de Nemours 'and Company, said he had reports indicating that Germany was making war explosives in considerable quantities. Evidence was presented that German political associations last year, were being armed with weapons made in the United States and smuggled through Holland.

A censorship was imposed by the committee in relation to a number of cablegrams apparently relating to a successful effort by the du Pont Company and its British ally, Imperial Chemical Industries, Limited, to keep a German firm from building a powder plant in Argentina.

If the cablegrams were made public, said Mr. Stephen Raushenbush, secretary of the committee, it might mean the actual destruction of life and property.

Members of the committee straightened in their seats when they heard that the du Pont Company, in February, 1933, hired an agent to sell powder in Germany and Holland. Evidence was given that on February 1 last year the company entered into a contract with Jungo Geira, described as an "international spy," to act as its agent for the sale of military explosives to the German Government. The company's executive committee had torn up the contract, but later it made a new agreement with Geira. This agreement 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 this equipment went to the Nazis before Herr Hitler's rise to power, but Communist and other private armies also received somei

Mr. Bennett Clark, Democrat member of the Senate for Missouri asserted that the rise of Herr Hitler had been financed indirectly by French munitions manufacturers in order to stimulate the sales of their own arms.