INTERCHANGING TRADE

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 53, Issue 3824, 21 October 1936, Page 6

INTERCHANGING TRADE

POSITION OF GERMANY AND FRANCE. A recent cable forecasts that in spite of the fierceness of Hitler’s recent attacks on Russia, Germany may establish big credits (as she has done before) to enable the Soviet to buy German goods—machinery, locomotives, motor cars and structural steel. So trade disregards political prejudice and enemy strengthens enemy in time of peace without counting the ultimate cost. A fascinating study of this phenomenon may be found in the relations between France and Germany. French journalists have discussed whether France is not arming Germany, and have concluded that in a sense she is. The crux of the matter is the export of iron ore, obviously indispen sable for warfare. In 1935, France exported to Germany 5,400,000 tons of this. The figure showed a huge leap from that for 1934, suggesting on the face of it that Germany was piling up war stocks. Now, Germany in 1935 bought iron ore from other sources besides France; but France actually supplied one-half of her requirements; a case of providing French shells to be hurled at Frenchmen from German guns. Germany could, of course, buy her iron ore from non-French sources; but there is reason to believe that it would be dearer and perhaps not so good. The deal is not wholly one-sided. The iron ore of France arms Germany, but French authorities point out that various German commodities arm France. The barges that travel on the French canals and supply the powder magazines are German. The presses for French torpedoes were sold to France by Krupp, who was the only manufacturer in a position to make them. In the great line of French forts fronting Germany (the Miginot line) are Diesel motors made in a German factory near Paris by German workers with a German director. France has an option on important quantities of German synthetic nitrate. And the principal article of German export to France is coal, which has been listed by the League of Nations as one of the "strategic” or “military” raw materials, because war cannot be waged (or prepared) without it. All this does not, in the opinion of some critics, meet the argument that France could probably embarrass Germany more than Germany could embarrass France if each banned supplies of “strategic raw materials” to the other. France would have the whip hand through that item of iron ore. Yet, far from cutting down the trade, the French (or, much more accurately, the great French ironmasters) foster it by all means in their power. Business is business—in war materials as in everything else. The German is the potential enemy of the Frenchman, but he is also a customer end vice versa;. Hitler hates Stalin and Stalin hates Hitler, but —“What can we sell you to-day?”