FEAR OF DEFEAT

New Zealand Herald, Volume 78, Issue 24103, 23 October 1941, Page 10

FEAR OF DEFEAT

GERMAN APPREHENSION CONVERSION OF CURRENCY MINISTER WARNS PUBLIC (Reed. 10.21 p.m.) LONDON, Oct. 21 Disappointment at the slow progress of the Russian campaign, also doubt regarding its outcome, are being widely expressed in Germany in various ways, says the Times' Stockholm correspondent. Falling confidence in German currency is only one manifestation of a growing realisation that Germany may, after all, lose the war. Remembering their experiences in the early 'twenties, people are hastening to convert their money into tangible effects. Dr. W< Funk, the German Minister of Economics, in an article in the Frankfurter Zeitung, issued a warning, which, however, is more likely to stimulate than check the dreaded phenomenon. Funk admits that the tendency is to be found not merely among individuals, but it has also taken hold of the German business world, which, "because goods are scarce, considers money so worthless that it is not worth keeping." He calls the culprits "State criminals," and adds that Germany will punish people relentlessly if they scatter money about as if it were worthless, because at present such a tendency is more harmful in connection with the war than it would be at any other time.

The correspondent adds that the word "peace" keeps cropping up among Germans both inside and outside Germany, and the spate of peace proposals, which have kept trickling from German and pro-German sources throughout the summer, is swelling into a larger stream whose waters How toward various persons or institutions which possess potentially or actually some influence with the British public or with the British authorities. Some of these advances have been made even directly to correspondents of London newspapers. The latest proposal which has been launched at Stockholm by an admittedly proGerman personage, who "has personal friends at the top in England." envisages a bargain with Britain at the expense of France and Russia.