THE NAZI RULE

Otago Daily Times, Issue 22268, 22 May 1934, Page 13

THE NAZI RULE

GRAVE SITUATION \ ■ • . ..." .:'■■. " FAILURE OF HITLERISM." (FBOM ODB OWH CORRESPONDENT.) LONDON, April 5. Probably the most important of recent information regarding the condition of Germany is contained in an unsigned article in the News-Chronicle. The correspondent, who seems to speak . with authority, says that despite their brave words and high-sounding statistics, it has become plain beyond dispute that the Nazis have failed to implement their financiarnnd economic pledges. The goods have not been delivered (the writer continues). The fact that they have not done so is producing i grave political situation, and Germans themselves—whether rightly or wrongly the future will show —talk freely'of impending sensational developments. "Things can't go on like this, 1 ' is the almost universal refrain. For the Government of a great cation, brawn—which the Nazis have in abundance^ —has proved a poor substitute for brain. Economically, financially,' and still more, of course, culturally, . the country is moribund. i EXCESS OF PRODUCTION. Output—as a result of the industrial policy encouraged by the Government—is exceeding the public's power of absorption to a startling extent. It is calculated that during the first year of Nazi rule goods of a value of 1,600,000,000 marks (£80,000,000 at par) were produced in excess of market requirements, as compared with an overplus of but one-tenth of that amount in the last year of non-Nazi rule. In the policy to produce goods without reference to the needs of the market the amount of wool imported last year is believed to have been twice the volume imported during the most flourishing year in the hectic post-war period. Cotton imports, too, have been extremely higji, a circumstance in part due to the manufacture of gun-cotton on a larger scale than hitherto. The financing of the vast provision-of-work schemes, of which there has lately been so much talk in Germany, must be a dangerous operation, and little on the subject that is reliable is allowed to appear in the muzzled German newspapers. ECONOMIC DISINTEGRATION. I do not share the view of many

Germans that the gathering clouds portend a crash. A more reasonable prediction is that economic disintegration will make the necessity for big changes so clear that to effect them methods of violence will not be needed.

The failure of Hitlerism as a political and economic theory is- manifest; 'nit, curiously, the prestige of Adolf rfi;ler himself is higher than ever. No German regime that one can picture would be able to forgo the asset of this mar's personality. The same cannot be said of other Nazi leaders.