THE New Zealand Herald AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS. FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 28, 1941 RIBBENTROP'S BOASTS

New Zealand Herald, Volume 78, Issue 24134, 28 November 1941, Page 6

THE New Zealand Herald AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS. FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 28, 1941 RIBBENTROP'S BOASTS

•- Deputising for his master, Ribbent- trop has addressed those privileged y to ratify the anti-Comintern Pact and to bless the New Order. The Danes have given him their answer. With the lesson before them of the massacres in Poland, Serbia and France, they have dared to demonstrate against the Pact in the streets of Copenhagen. It is no united K Europe which Hitler claims to lead against Great Britain. Ribbentrop i! repeated the taunt of Napoleon: I' that the British consistently fight to keep Europe divided. The taunt comes ill from the man who shook hands with Stalin and played a leadt ing part in frustrating the neighbourly friendship which he promised J v in 1939 would endure between Nazi i Germany and Soviet Russia. There [; can be no unity where the Ger- ■ mans are the "Herrenvolk" and the conquered people their serfs. Where unity is lacking a long war against the steadily gathering might of Great Britain and the United J States is impossible. Ribbentrop boasts that "after the certain defeat - of Russia," Europe can fight Great Britain in a 30 years' war. Three . assumptions underly this assertion: That Russia will be defeated, that 5 Germany will be fighting Great r Britain alone and not Great Britain j and the United States and, finally, - that Germany will command the unified control of European agriculture r and industry from Spain to the r Urals. Finally, after making these 5 sweeping assumptions, Ribbentrop repudiates his earlier promises of a quick victory and confronted with the blood bath in Russia concedes • that this will be a long war. Not . all his boasts conceal that dread intimation to the German people. Hitler has made enormous advances in Russia. No realist will deny that important fact. The danger is very real that the German army may reach the Caucasus and that eventually they may restore even wrecked oil fields. But between these events and the Germans are still many miles, many hundreds of thousands of indomitable Russian soldiers. To say that victory over them is certain is to claim a command of the future which will not even deceive the docile Germans. Hitler has lost at least one in every four of the soldiers who invaded Russia. That is a serious loss in a long war—it affects staying power and it cannot be concealed in the homes of the bereaved. But while the democracies can deny Hitler the certainty of victory in Russia, they must concede the possibility of his occupying a very great stretch of Russian territory and then turning, still with a great army and air force, upon Great Britain herself. In spite of heavy losses, the morale of that army and air force is still good. It has an enormous accumulation of armaments and it is directed by able and desperate men. For men like Ribbentrop are desperate. His very language, breathing hatred and, be it noted, fear of Britain, shows that in spite of all the victories and all the power, the principal enemy still remains. "Sooner or later Britain must be defeated." If that is a threat to us it is a warning to the Germans themselves. Ribbentrop and his associates are fighting for their lives. The threat to lay Britain waste is the murderer's exhortation to his associates to hurl themselves into the fight before justice overtakes them. It is a cry of fear as well as a boast of brute strength. But let no man or woman in the British Empire under-estimate that strength. In their speeches two months ago Mr. Churchill and Hitler did not materially disagree. Hitler said he turned on Russia because his air force was not powerful enough to deal with Great Britain while Russia remained hostile in the rear. Mr. Churchill said that Hitler's air force was his only weak peint; his armies and their equipment continue greater than ours. They are the menace confronting the British Empire. But in emphasising the threat, Ribbentrop proceeds from counting his Russian chickens before they are hatched to assume that a Europe under German control will fight only Great Britain. The responsibility of the United States is to upset that assumption. Germany sitting upon Europe, coercing all its nations, . driving all its industries, is an enor- < mously powerful enemy if Great 1 Britain alone were her adversary. < But America must not give Germany 1 time to consolidate and develop the ( wrecked territories of the conquered ' portions of Russia. German organi- 1 sation, given the opportunity, would f restore the Ukraine. If the Ameri- \ can people come into this struggle ] heart and soul, if they train an \ army to fight in Europe, Ribbentrop's boasts fall to the ground. • America can, if she wills, make Ribbentrop's talk of a 30 years' war 1 mere empty words. ' i CONTROL OF BANKING ' A considerable measure of control \ over the activities of the trading : banks in Australia is established by 1 regulations which have just been < issued. Their provisions are in accordance with the declaration on £ the subject contained in the Budget f and embody the plan accepted by * the banks at a conference with 1 Government representatives three 1 weeks ago. Control in its present form has been proclaimed as purely o a war measure. The regulations n effecting it have been issued under 1. the National Security Act, which H means they are due to lapse six ,: months after the end of the war. () Moreover, the banks were given a * clear-cut assurance that the Government was not seeking to introduce t; by this means any instalment of the 0 nationalisation of banking which ' sections of the Australian Labour Party insistently demand. The main [ claim for the scheme is that it will give the Government and the v Commonwealth Bank power to r direct the use of banking funds in t

the financing of new industries, thus rounding off the position created by the existing control of private investment. The provision requiring the deposit with the Commonwealth Bank of trading bank funds docs not accord with ordinary central banking practice. Such deposits are usually required to be in a certain ratio to a bank's own liabilities to its clients. That is so in New Zealand. The Australian deposits are to be "surplus investable funds" —extra liquid funds accumulated since the outbreak of Avar. The statement made by Sir Claude Reading, chairman of the Commonwealth Bank, shows how this measure of control is to be used. The policy appears to be the Government's answer to the criticism that it has not taken sufficient precautions against the danger of inflation or to reduce consumption of non-essential goods for the benefit of the war effort.