Manawatu Evening Standard. SATURDAY, JULY 24, 1937. ECONOMIES IN GERMANY.

Manawatu Standard, Volume LVII, Issue 200, 24 July 1937, Page 8

Manawatu Evening Standard. SATURDAY, JULY 24, 1937. ECONOMIES IN GERMANY.

From time to time brief cable messages originating in Berlin convey interesting, and frequently almost quaint, news items indicating the difficulties the Nazi regime is encountering in negotiating another European spring and summer, and the drastic steps being taken to ensure that the finances of the country are expended to the greatest effect. Only this week, for instance, the Berlin correspondent of the London. Times drew, attention to the economies being effected in the. dental profession as a result of which the ii 1 ,135,000 worth of gold that would have entered Germans’ mouths as fillings has been halved to provide for their sustenance, an intriguing alternative. Barbers, too, are participating in the campaign, preserving hair clippings for ultimate use in felts and carpets. Germany has never made any secret of the desperate nature of her financial plight; rather has she proclaimed it a virtue of Nazism that her people have met the difficult conditions with cheerfulness —albeit forced —and are sacrificing for the common good. There is a saying current in Berlin that “Germany is Hitler—Hitler is Dr. Schacht,” and there is much evidence to sustain the laconic quip. In the very front rank of world financial advisers and bankers, Dr. Schacht, an opportunist and a man of boundless ambition, saved Germany from chaotic conditions in 1923, when he invented the Rentenmark, which stabilised the currency. He has contrived, it is said, to make himself indispensable as a link between Herr Hitler and the whole of the German economic life. While he has proclaimed to the world at large that his nation could only pay her debts to those who frequented her own markets, he has raised huge sums by what have practically amounted to forced internal loans. ' But even with all the cooperation of the German people assured him, this in itself has proved insufficient, and the nation is concentrating on a policy of “waste not, want not.”

A publication issued in Berlin by the Government has declared that in 1936' “the German food supply policy had to tackle a series of vast and arduous tasks. . . . The new organisation has undergone its baptism of fire under conditions that were not always easy. The ‘Battle of Production, ’ which started late in the autumn of 1934 and aims at increasing the domestic production of those products for which we have to rely to a great extent upon foreign supplies, has been waged unswervingly. After the great aims had been brought out in the first and second years, and the ways that lead to an increase

in production had been disclosed, the tactics of the struggle were modified to a certain extent.” The area under cultivation had been increased considerably, the sheep fiocks enlarged, and the growth of potatoes, grain, oil crops and legumes immeasurably stimulated. But Dr. Schacht still saw danger ahead, and at the commencement of this year instistuted an enlightenment campaign with the terse slogan, “Stop that Waste!” which, according to the official publication just quoted, “concerns particularly the consumers, manufacturers, and distributors of foodstuffs. Expert estimates place the amount lost on the way from the producer to the consumer and in households as high as about 1.500 million Reichsmarks annually. . . Part of that sum can be saved for the national economy by enlightenment and education.” This, coupled with the control of consumption of foodstuffs on a scientific basis, is Germany’s present-day task, and the thoroughness with which the Teuton spirit.is fighting the economic battle is easily gauged by the periodic despatches from Berlin.