Adolph Hitler,
Chancellor of Germany.
THE WESTERN
MAIL, February 7th, 1933.
A WELSHMAN LOOKS AT
EUROPE (1)
Wales’s Bonds With the Continent
By GARETH
JONES
SOUTHAMPTON TO
BREMEN.
Near the Isle of Wight the fastest liner in the world,
the steamship Bremen, having arrived from New York, is waiting, and
before long I shall be on board sailing to the Europe of 1933. A
journey of 6,000 miles lies before me through a continent which is torn
by national passions and class hatreds.
This turbulent Europe of 1933 is more closely linked with
Wales than one would imagine. In 1914 a shot ringing out in a
remote corner of the Balkans led to young Welsh soldiers streaming from
the valleys and villages of South Wales to the battlefields of France.
In 1919 it was a Welshman who played a leading part in making the Europe
of to-day, in framing its frontiers and in calling into life the new
States which have revolutionised the maps of 1914.
One Stroke of
the Pen
In the last few years a few dark-haired French business
men and politicians, puffing at their cigarettes round a conference
table, have with one stroke of a pen, by a quota or embargo, caused
Welsh miners to lose employment.
The building of a new railway from the coalfields of
Silesia across Poland to the Baltic Sea led to many a night of worry for
the Welsh coal exporter to Scandinavia.
The red light of alarm which shone out in May, 1931, when
the greatest Austrian bank, the Credit-Anstalt, was on the verge of
failure, shattered so greatly the confidence of the world that it led to
the fall of the pound and had inestimable consequences to Welsh trade.
Strife in some far-off European corner may again cause
the bugles of war to sound the alarm in Wales. A group of business
men sitting in Berlin or Vienna may again with one small signature throw
Welshmen out of work or cause Welsh-men to take up their tools again.
Wales and Europe are inextricably bound. What is happening in
Europe will hit or help Wales. To find out what is happening in
Europe is the object of this journey which will take me across the North
Sea to Bremen, down to Saxony, into the new State of Czecho-Slovakia to
Prussian Berlin, to the danger zone of the Polish Corridor and Danzig,
through the vast area of the new Poland, across the Soviet frontier into
Moscow, into Red villages and towns and then back home to Wales.
We Are Off!
It is time to begin. The tender which carries the
passengers from the port of Southampton to the steamship Bremen, which
waits in the roads, is hooting, and we are off to seek to unravel the
mystery of the Europe of 1933. We pass the largest vessel in the
world, the Majestic (56,000 tons), towering high in its dry dock.
Farther on a line of anchored ships lies idle, a tragic commentary on
the state of shipping. Seaplanes dart down and glide along the
water not many yards from the tender. The low coast of the Isle of
Wight can be seen to the west in the mist.
Soon the gigantic form of the Bremen, with its two vast
yellow funnels, looms before us. The tender approaches and
comes alongside. Hundreds upon hundreds of port-holes look down
upon us. As we British passengers step into the opening in the
side of the vessel a brass band on the upper deck plays "God Save the
King." Stewards seize our luggage and march down endless
corridors.
"You’ve just come from New York. What’s it like there?" I
ask my steward.
"Terrible," he replies. "There are more beggars on
the street than in Germany. The poor fellows have no unemployment
insurance. And there’s over million out of work in New York."
Honoured Welsh
Bards
When the steward has put my luggage in the cabin a voyage
of exploration begins through this vessel of 52,000 tons, which has won
the Blue Riband of the Atlantic. From the cabaret and dance hall
of the boat, through the spacious lounge, along the shopping street I
wander, until I come into the library, where an agreeable surprise
awaits every Welshman.
Poetry of the leading nations of the world is carved into
the wooden panels, and the first quotation I see is from Dafydd ap
Gwilym and begins:
Yr wybrynt helynt hylaw
A gwrdd drwst a gerdda draw...
Underneath there is carved another Welsh poem:
Gwawr! Gwawr!
Geinwawr ei grudd
Mae’r haul yn dod ar donnau’r wawr
Fel llong o’r tragwyddoldeb mawr.
The songs of Welsh bards now decorate the swiftest vessel
ever built.
But the vessel is almost empty. A few lonely people
stroll about, and the very silence on board is symbolic of the crash in
world shipping. A talk on the bridge with the captain and other
officers gives a clear picture of the distress of seafaring folk.
The Yellow
Races
The boat is only 25 per cent. occupied. Out of a
possible complement of 2,500 passengers there were only 600 on board
from New York. Some of the officers curse the tariffs of the
world, and one of them says: "It is the doom of the white race which we
are seeing now, and the yellow races are listening. Every nation
is trying to save itself and basing its policy on a nationalism of a
hundred years ago. Only a new outlook can rescue us."
Will the Europe of 1933 have this new outlook? Or
will the old hatreds remain? An answer to this question may soon
be found, because twenty hours have passed on this German boat in a
whirl of concerts, meals, films, and dances; the Bremen is going slowly
through the ice of the North Sea coast and Germany is in sight.
******
T HE
WESTERN MAIL, February 8th, 1933
A WELSHMAN LOOKS AT EUROPE (ii)
What the King
Conquered, the Prince Shaped, the Field Marshal defended, the Soldier
saved and united.
GERMANY WANTS A NEW FREDERICK THE GREAT
By GARETH
JONES
A crowd has gathered in one of Bremen’s chief streets and
is staring at a group of pictures in a shop window. Two or three
youngsters look with flashing eyes at the scenes depicted.
The first photograph is of Mussolini-stern, with firm
jaw. The German boys look at one another, nod, and say: "That’s
the kind of man we want here."
The second photograph shows thousands upon thousands of
Nazis meeting in Danzig in their khaki uniform, carrying red banners
with the swastika upon a white circle in the middle. "Danzig shall
remain German" run the words underneath. "Thirteen years ago
Danzig was torn from the Fatherland by the brutal Treaty of Versailles."
The youngsters, I can see, are burning with indignation when they look
upon that scene.
The third photograph depicts French soldiers dragging a
German policeman through the streets of a German town. French
cavalrymen are riding alongside, some of them smiling scornfully.
Underneath the photograph are the words: "The attack on the Ruhr ten
years ago. A despicable blot on France's honour. Germany, awake!"
The German youngsters look at each other, and one says:
"To think that we Germans have stood that disgrace for thirteen years!
But we will stand it no longer. Hitler will bring us honour
again."
Germany’s
Honour
That boy reflects the feelings of a large part of
Germany. The period of patient waiting and of submitting to
insults, the Germans feel, is at an end. Of this passionate desire
for equality of status and of this hatred of a subordinate position in
Europe I was soon to have proof, because ten minutes after the train had
steamed out of Bremen station towards Hanover and Leipzig I entered into
conversation with two German ex-soldiers. One of them was pale and
excitable; the other was a former sergeant-major, stout, tall, with a
red, scarred face.
The pale, excitable German said: "Germany can no longer
suffer the disgrace it has had ever since the Socialists stabbed us in
the back in 1918. We were betrayed then. That’s why we lost
the war. The Republic has been the curse of Germany. But I
have kept my old Imperial flag, and it’s waiting for the day when it
will be unfurled and we can save Germany’s honour, which has been
trampled under foot."
The sergeant-major broke in: "Quite right. The day
is bound to come. I was in the war on the third day. I went
through Belgium for Imperial Germany. It was all in vain because
of the traitors in Germany who have ruined everything- those Socialists,
who have no feeling for the Fatherland."
The Kaiser
"So you want a Monarchy again ?" I asked.
"Of course," they both said.
"The Kaiser ?" I asked.
The sergeant-major puffed at his cheap cigar and
meditated. "No. He should have gone out with the fleet in
November, 1918, and died like a man. No. Not the Kaiser."
"Well, the Crown Prince?" I asked.
"No, not the Crown Prince. He had too good a time
behind the lines while we were in the front trenches. It will be a
long time before we get a Monarchy, but it’ll have to come some day.
It will have to be another Frederick the Great."
This sentence gave me a clue to the feeling in Germany
today. Frederick the Great, the Prussian King who struggled
against almost all the powers of Europe in the eighteenth century and
built the military system of Prussia, is now the hero of Germany.
Attitude
Towards Britain
The Germans feel that when they are surrounded by the
French, the Poles, and the Czechs, and have their army reduced to
100,000 men, their honour and self-respect have disappeared. They
bear no personal rancour against Britain, but their feeling against
France, Poland, and also America, is often violent.
The pale German said: "The British were honourable
enemies and we respect honourable enemies. But the French and the
Poles have insulted us ever since the war and treated us like insects.
And the Americans, too. What right had they to put their paws into
the war in 1917 when it had nothing to do with them?"
The conclusion that the two ex-soldiers came to-and the
fellow-travellers in the compartment nodded and muttered consent-was:
"We must and we will again have a big army, so that we Germans can hold
our heads high again."
That is what national-minded German men are thinking.
What of the women? I was soon to learn one widely-spread point of
view, for the train had come into Hanover and I had to change for the
Leipzig train.
The Good Old
Days
Into the compartment came a big, strapping woman in
home-spun tweeds. "An officer’s wife," I said to myself. Almost
her first words were: "We must have big army. As a mother and as
the wife of a landowner, I say that the youth Germany is going to
destruction. The young people have no discipline, and it’s
discipline we want. We will have the old army back again.
Let the lads earn only few-pence a day, as they used to in the good old
days before the war. We cannot afford to have our youngsters idle
upon the street. The Army would take half a million away from
idleness.
"Then we people who breed horses have to suffer because
the young people, not having been in the Army, know nothing about
horses. Our Hanover horses are famous and have to be specially
handled, very quietly treated. But they are being, spoilt because
the youngsters have not been in the Army and thus know nothing about
horses. We must have the Army again."
It is not only the Nationalists who want a big Army in
Germany, but also the Socialists. I recalled a conversation with a
former Cabinet Minister, a Socialist, who had stated that a large Army
was essential for Germany. He feared the Reichswehr (the present
professional Army of 100,000 men). "It is a danger. It gives
twelve years’ training and after that its soldiers get preference
everywhere. It also has too much political power.
The Private
Armies
"Moreover, a large Army is a force for national unity.
Germany is now split into contending private armies which hate and
attack each other. The Nazis shoot at the Communists and vice
versa. The Catholics hate the Protestants and the Prussians loathe
the Bavarians. If we had an army these would live together and
learn to get on with one another.
A large army would be a force for peace. Today the
army for German youth is a romantic ideal. If the young people
were grilled and cursed at, if they had to sweat and have blisters, they
would soon be against militarism.
Germany is bound to have a great army again, I thought,
as the lights of Leipzeig appeared and the train entered the largest
station in Europe. What effect would that have on the peace of
Europe and of Wales? The outlook seemed dark.
*******
THE WESTERN
MAIL, Thursday February 9th, 1933
A WELSHMAN LOOKS AT EUROPE (iii)
HITLER IS THERE, BUT WILL HE STAY?
By GARETH
JONES
LEIPZIG (Saxony).
My Saxon host came rushing into my room, slammed the door
and shouted: "Hitler is Chancellor!" Even the Alsatian wolfhound
in the corner barked with excitement.
The Saxon continued: "Hindenburg has appointed Hitler
Prime Minister. It’s a coalition between the National-Socialists
and the German Nationalist party. Papen is Vice-Chancellor.
At last Germany has a National Government such as you have in Britain."
I went out into the streets to see if anything were
happening. All was calm. I overheard snippets of
conversation: "Adolf Hitler is a second Napoleon." … "Will there be a
General Strike?" … "There’ll be some murders in Berlin to-night." …
"It’s an attack on the working-classes." … "Hitler has gone over to the
capitalists."
Then somebody came up to me, pressed a leaflet into my
hand and slipped away. I looked at the pamphlet and read the
letters: "GENERAL STRIKE AGAINST THE FASCIST TERROR! HITLER IS
CHANCELLOR."
"This new Cabinet of open Fascist Dictatorship is a most
brutal declaration of war against the German working-class.
Instead of Schleicher we have against us bayonets of the Army and the
revolvers of the Hitler bandits. It means limitless terror, the
smashing of the last rights of the workers. The barbaric of régime
of Fascism is to be set up over Germany.
"COME OUT ON " TO THE STREETS? Lay down your tools!
Down with Hitler, Papen and Hugenberg! Long live the General
Strike! Long live the struggle for a Workers and Peasant Republic!
The Central Committee of the Communist Party of Germany."
Newspaper
Banned
In the streets all was normal. I went to the
station to look for any signs of revolt or of general strike.
Nothing happened. I asked for a Communist newspaper. It’s
banned to-day," said the girl. "We’ve just been told that it is
illegal to sell it any more."
"Will there be a general strike now that Hitler is in
power?" I asked a friend. "Will the Communists and the
Socialists lay down tools?"
"No a bit of it," replied the German. "The Unions
have got no money; and no man would be fool enough to lose his job these
days."
The advent of Hitler has, therefore, been disappointingly
calm. It is true that thousands upon thousands surged through the
Berlin streets to greet the new Chancellor. It is true that the
Hitler newspaper reports:
"Storm-leader Maikowski shot dead by Red murderer!
On the march home after the overwhelming welcome to Chancellor Hitler
our comrade, Storm-leader Maikowski, as he marched singing songs of
battle, was laid low by a bullet fired by a band of Communist murderers.
… His death shall not remain unavenged!" Otherwise, throughout
Germany, all was calm. A few Nazi banners were hanging from
windows in the Leipzig streets. On one wall was written a threat:
"Nazi Storm Troops, the Red Trade Union Organisation Warns You!"
But that was all.
A New Chapter
Nevertheless, the advent of Hitler may well open a new
chapter in German postwar history. It makes the class-struggle in
Germany more violent than it has been before. The Nazis have now
co-operated with the most capitalistic sections of Germany. In the
Cabinet, led by Hitler, there are Nationalist industrialists and great
landowners. The German workers will be more bitter in their
opposition to the Government than they were to Schleicher.
Therefore, many people fear that Hitler, in spite of his desire to unite
all classes and all creeds, will only succeed in making Germany more
divided into master and worker than ever.
Hitler will find this problem of the workers the most
difficult he has to deal with. In his wireless speech he has
promised that by his Four-Year Plan no unemployed man will be left in
Germany at the end of four years. Is this not too great a promise?
Will not the disillusion sweep away the present foundations of Germany?
Hitler has gone so much to the Right, away from Socialism
to Nationalism that he is bound to lose the faith which Radical elements
in his party have in him.
Hitler’s Great
Task
Hitler promises to overcome Bolshevism in Germany and to
crush the followers of Marx. But it is misery and hunger, and not
agitation, that have made 6,000,000 Germans vote for the Communist
Party. If Hitler fails to banish misery and hunger many more millions
will vote for the Communist Party, and the already nerve-stricken
Germany will again be on the verge of civil war.
In German politics, however, nothing can be prophesied.
There are to be elections on March 5th, and what will happen then no one
knows. Perhaps there will be a National Dictatorship.
Perhaps … but no one can tell.
The personality of Hitler arouses no confidence in the
calm observer. It is hard to reconcile his shrieking hatred of the
Jews with any balanced judgment. It is hard to think that a
telegram he sent congratulating certain Nazis who had brutally murdered
a Communist before the eyes of the murdered man’s family reveals any
spirit of justice. Nor have Hitler’s scornful hints about the old
age of Hindenburg and his reminder to the President that he (Hitler)
could wait, while a man of over 80 years could not, earned the Nazi
leader the respect of certain observers. Hitler’s neurotic
behaviour in a December meeting of Nazis, when he burst into tears and
wept without control, was not that of a Bismark.
His Goal
Reached
Hitler is Chancellor. The former Austrian
lance-corporal, with his thirteen million followers, has reached his
goal at the very moment when his fortunes seemed to be turning and when
defeat was staring him in the face.
He has begun quietly and legally. The strong whisky
of the Nazi speeches has so far, in practice, been milk-and-water.
He has not destroyed the Republic. He promises merely a Four-Year
Plan to give employment. His is a tremendous task.
If he fails to bring Work and Bread in Germany far more
blood will flow in the streets of Berlin than has ever flowed before.
*******
THE WESTERN
MAIL AND SOUTH WALES NEWS, 13th February, 1933
A WELSHMAN LOOKS AT EUROPE (iv)
German and Slav; Century old Problems of
Minorities
By GARETH
JONES
A VALLEY IN
BOHEMIA.
So this is Bohemia. not, however, the Bohemia renowned
among Welsh operatic societies, nor the Bohemia of literature, where
poets and artists in large-brimmed black hats discuss poems and
pictures, nor the Bohemia of night life in Europe’s capitals, but the
real Bohemia which forms the northern part of the new State
Czecho-slovakia.
Both sides of the steep valley are covered with fir
trees, now white with the snow which has fallen without stopping for two
or three days. The roads are almost impassable except with sledges
dragged by horses whose bells tinkle when they drive through the
villages. From the chimneys of the few scattered cottages rise
wisps of bluish-grey smoke. This mountainous scene in the region
south of Saxony and north of Prague is indeed peaceful.
Quiet though it may seem, however, this valley is in
reality a battlefield. Two civilisations are here struggling
against one another-the German and the Slav.
Analogy of
Wales
Just as in Wales two cultures and two languages.
Welsh and English, are striving for mastery, so here two cultures, that
of Germany and that of Czechoslovakia, come into conflict; but the fight
is a hundred times more bitter and the consequences for the peace of the
world a hundred times graver than that between the Welsh and English
cultures, though the problem is at bottom the same.
The people who live in these mountains are Germans, but
they are ruled by the Czechs (pronounced as "cheques "), a Slavonic
race. We are thus face to face with one of the greatest battles in
the world, that between two nations, one the oppressor and the other the
oppressed.
This battle is carried on in thousands of petty ways in
Czechoslovakia, in Poland. in Yugoslavia, and in other countries, and is
known to the League of Nations as the Problem of Minorities.
The nations in Europe which have the upper hand are
trying to crush those members of their State who speak a foreign
language. It is just as if the English attempted in every way to
crush the Welsh and the Scotch and turn them into Cockneys; as if the
English did not allow any Welshman to have a really responsible
position, and as if the judges favoured the English in courts of law,
nearly always giving judgment against the Welsh.
Czechs’
Dominance
In this State of Czechoslovakia, set up by the Treaty of
Versailles, out of fourteen million inhabitants only about seven million
belong to the dominant race, the Czechs. Three-and-a-half million are
Germans, while the others are Slovaks, Ruthenians, and Hungarians.
The seven million Czechs, one half of the population, are the masters
and are seeking to spread their power as rapidly as possible. One
weapon is the law. In police-courts it is sometimes difficult for
Germans to obtain justice. Last night as the woodcutters assembled
in the inn one of the villagers gave an example of this inequality under
which the Germans suffer. The woodcutters listened intently,
puffing at their long German pipes, staring into their beer-mugs, and
nodding agreement as the leader told his story: "A fine man is our
forester, real good German, kind to everybody, and such a fond father
you never saw. He looks after the forest splendidly for a Prince,
who owns the forests here. Well, just before Christmas, after the
first snow had fallen our forester was going with his wife through the
woods half -an-hour away when he looked up and there he saw the rascal
Wenzel, the Czech who lives in the village. And Wenzel was cutting
down the young fir-trees, stealing them to sell as Christmas trees.
‘Stop!’ shouts our Forester, and goes up to him.
Wenzel yells something at him in his heathen Czech language. Our
forester bends down to count the fir trees which Wenzel had stolen,
when, crack! A heavy blow comes on his skull."
‘The brute!!,’ murmur the villagers.
"Justice"
"And the Czech runs away, leaving him there bleeding and
senseless in the snow. The forester’s wife puts a coat under her
husband’s head and rushes to us in the village. We get the sledge
and horses and off we go and find the forester there with a pool of red
blood in the snow all around. We bring him back, and all through
the Christmas days he shouted mad things and would not wake. His
children watched him Christmas Day and couldn’t understand what was the
matter. "But, to cut a long story short, there was a trial.
But the judge was a Czech. They wouldn’t allow evidence in German;
and the rascal Wenzel, although he was guilty of attempted murder, as
well as of stealing trees, got off scot-free!"
The villagers grunted angrily, "That’s how they treat us
Germans—no justice for a German."
That Christmas drama, narrated in a Bohemian inn, throws
a light on the grave problem of Minorities.
Hour of
Revenge
By other methods, such as education and favouritism for
non-Germans, by ejecting landowners and settling the land of the Germans
by Czech or, in Poland, by Polish labourers, the dominant Slavonic races
are attempting to crush their Teutonic subjects. The tables are
turned. Formerly the Germans were ruthless in destroying the
Slavonic cultures. Now the hour of revenge for the Slavs has come.
In Czecho-slovakia the treatment of the subject nations
has not been so brutal as in other countries, such as Poland, and often
the Germans themselves are to blame. The fine veteran statesman,
Masaryk, the President of the Czecho-slovak Republic, has tried his best
to reconcile the races, and he is respected by all. Many Czech
officials try their best to help the Germans. But still the petty
oppression goes on.
This oppression in the new States is a danger for Europe.
It may lead to grave trouble.
Lesson for
Wales
It is arousing the passionate feeling in Germany that the
lost territories must be won back.
It is causing misery and injustice and even terror in
Europe.
The Welsh, as a small nation, should keep an eye on the
oppressed peoples of Europe and stand up for justice, for fear the
burning hatreds beneath the surface in Europe should again lead to a
world conflagration, in which Wales herself would suffer.
That is the lesson of this valley in Bohemia.
******
THE WESTERN
MAIL AND SOUTH WALES NEWS, February 15th, 1933
A WELSHMAN LOOKS AT EUROPE (v)
THE ICE BREAKS IN THE MOUNTAINS
By GARETH
JONES
A VALLEY IN BOHEMIA.
Last night, as the woodcutter and the toymakers were
gathered in the village inn, singing their old folk-songs of the Ore
Mountains, a villager dashed in and shouted: "The ice is breaking! The
ice is breaking !"
All jumped to their feet and there was a scramble to the
door. Then a series of crashes could be heard outside, as if many
large pine trees in the narrow valley had tumbled to the earth.
There was a breaking, grinding noise, to the continual accompaniment of
the roar of a big torrent.
I was mystified, for the stream was so small that it
could never make a noise which could so outrival the Thames or the
Severn in flood. So I rushed out with the woodcutters to the back
of the inn, which was situated a few yards from the river and then I
realised why they were excited. The stream had really swollen into
a big river and was carrying along - as one could vaguely see in the
darkness with the help of a torch - huge blocks of ice, which were being
dashed against trees and stones. The water was flooding up to the
court-yard of the inn.
Saved - on the
Roof
"Danger! danger!" shouted the innkeeper.
"We’ll have to telephone right down the valley." The innkeeper’s
son rushed to the telephone while the others still stared at the sudden
elevation of their local stream into the dignity of a real river.
One of them said: "There may be bad times to-night in the next village,
because their houses come right down to the stream. It was madness
to build them so close. When the ice broke last year there were
some people who had to climb out on the roof and were only saved that
way."
Someone cried that we had better see if the bridge were
still standing. We went out on to the village street, which was
one mass of ice, and slithered along until we reached the bridge.
Its half-iron, half-wooden structure was still standing firm, and we
stood on it watching the torrent rushing underneath, and seeing every
other moment a large sheet of ice being tossed from one side of the
stream to the other.
News then arrived from the next village. They had
been long prepared. People living on the bank of the river had
already been removed to safety, we heard, and beyond the usual flood no
grave results were feared. The children bad all been wakened and
were staring out of the windows at the swiftly-travelling ice-blocks,
and some of the younger ones were terrified by the rumbling and the
crashing in the valley.
Disasters of
Other Days.
The excitement soon died down and the villagers returned
to their pipes and their gossip.
Tales of how the ice had broken in years gone past were
told by the elders. The ice-drifts of to-day were, in their view,
mere bagatelles compared with the disasters which the ice had brought
fifty years ago. There was silence when memories of lives lost in
the floods in the Bohemian mountains were revived.
"When that cloudburst came over Gnats’ Tower and the
water was dammed by piles upon piles of timber," said a toy maker, "and
when the dam suddenly burst and waves descended on the cottages, bearing
huge pine trees and smashing bridges and drowning people, that was
terrible."
When the morning came the stream had lost its violence,
but everywhere there were blocks and large pieces of ice, tossed into
the fields around, on to the road, into the woods near the bank, and the
fir trees near the stream had had their bark torn by the sharp contact
of the on-coming ice.
Phenomenon
Explained
This phenomenon was explained by the sudden thaw and the
rain which had fallen heavily for twelve hours. Up to that change
in the weather the river had been completely frozen into masses of ice,
and the valley had been covered with snow.
When the thaw and the rain came water had formed in the
river and had loosened the ice from the banks. More and more water
formed, and in some parts of the stream was dammed by the ice masses.
Finally the pressure of the water was so great that the
ice blocks were finally loosened from one another and were driven down
stream. The ice often collected into packs, which collided with the
trees and stones and the banks, and caused the cracking and the crashing
which we had heard.
Such was the breaking of the ice in this village in
Bohemia.
******
THE WESTERN
MAIL AND SOUTH WALES NEWS, February 17th, 1933
A WELSHMAN LOOKS AT EUROPE (vi)
HOME INDUSTRIES ON THEIR DEATH-BED
By GARETH
JONES
A VILLAGE
IN THE ORE MOUNTAINS,
CZECHOSLOVAKIA.
IF one peeps into the small cottages of the villages in
this region one sees girls and women with nimble fingers knitting lace
around small buttons.
In some cottages the men are fast at work rapidly carving
pieces of wood into toys. With a small hand-machine they prepare
the rough outline of the forms of soldiers, sheep, pigs, Noah’s Arks,
geese, and carts. On another table there stand pots of paints of
the brightest red, the most glaring green, the deepest blue, and another
worker, with incredible speed, dabs the colour on to the wooden figures.
In another village thousands of pieces of glass stand in
the corner of the room and the women take many at a time, paint them
with spots of colour, and finally string them together so that they
tinkle like bells at the slightest touch.
The Two
Spectres
These are the famous home industries, which are now on
their death-bed. The men and women of these villages who lived by
making buttons and toys and glass decorations are the victims of the
Europe of 1933-the spectre of Tariffs and the spectre of the Machine.
Thousands of these friendly, simple mountain people are
now suffering hardship because the world has shut its doors upon their
toys- and because inventors have found machines which will do in one day
what one home worker would take a month to do. Their hardship is
symbolic of that of millions of men in Europe who are unemployed on
account of Tariffs and of Machines.
There is hardly a toy-shop in Wales which has not been
stocked with the wooden toys which these people have skillfully made.
There is hardly a Christmas tree in Welsh festivities which has not
tinkled with the glass pieces painted and strung together here.
From these lonely fir-covered mountain, valleys the handwork of the
villagers has gone out to Great Britain, to America, to Japan, to
Holland, to Italy, and to other countries.
World Bonds
No better example of how the whole world is bound
together by a million links could be given than this region. When
Welsh colliers earned less and could buy fewer toys for their children
the effect was immediately felt in this distant valley. When the
British Government placed a tariff upon toys from abroad these villagers
received a grave blow. The rest of the world had long placed
barriers in the way of the import of toys.
Thus tariffs have been the doom of this valley, and the
people here are unable to France, for goods from England, for food from
the Dominions, but they cannot buy because the door has been slammed it
the way of their goods. There is no demand for the products of
their labour and thus their wages have crashed down. I saw woman
who was knitting lace around buttons for dresses in American shops.
Each button tool five minutes to complete, for the knitting was most
delicate and skilled. " What do you get for making those laced buttons?’
I asked.
Hard-Earned
Money
She replied: "I get one shilling if make a gross".
For 144 buttons, each of which took five minutes to make, she only got
twelve pence. She continued: "Last week I did well. I earned
two shillings and sixpence. Of course I have to do my housework as
well." A girl told me that she usually earned one shilling and six
pence per week from this work.
Throughout Europe there are people like this woman who
depended upon home industry for their livelihood. This is now
disappearing and its disappearance brings us face to face with one of
the greatest revolutions in the world of today.
"How are the cobblers doing in this village?" I
asked a woodcutter. "Terribly," he replied. "You see, we
used to have our boots made by the cobbler, just as we used to have our
cloth made here by the weavers and the clothes made by the nearest
tailor. But now there is nothing left for the poor cobbler to do,
nor for the poor tailor, except a few repairs, because the factories and
the machines do everything. The big companies have everywhere
knocked out the shoemakers and the local tailors. The workers all
want to buy cheap shoes. You’ve heard of our huge factory here in
Czechoslovakia, Bata, haven’t you? Well, Bata has knocked out the
smaller men."
The Village
Shoemaker
My thoughts went immediately to Llanrhaiadr-ym-Mochnant.
where I used to spend my holidays as a schoolboy, and. to the village
shoemaker, Robert Jones, a great character in the town. I also
thought of the great part played in Welsh life by such shoemakers as
Richard Lloyd, the uncle of Mr. Lloyd George, who were outstanding
personalities. Those men gloried in their craft. In the
Europe of 1933 these men are disappearing, and their places are being
taken by vast factories and vast companies, which are getting more and
more a monopoly over the economic life of the world.
In this revolution-the concentrating of industry away
from the home into huge concerns-the machine has played a great part.
Even in this small Czechoslovakian valley this is obvious. Japan,
for example, used to buy many of the toys of Germany and of this
district. Then the Japanese put up a tariff against foreign toys
and set up factories with the latest machines, against which the simple
villagers could not compete. Japan then imported toys into Germany
and undercut the German toys in many lines. But the competition
and the poverty caused by the tariffs led to such a fall in prices that
both the Japanese and the German manufacturers suffered, and no one was
better off.
Effect on the
Child Mind
The machine has also affected the minds of children and
has made them despise . wooden toys. The boys and girls of today
demand locomotives, aeroplanes, and Zeppelins which are made of steel
and tin. The toymakers who carve from wood bewail this. They
say, "Children are spoilt by the machine-it has knocked out the home
industry of making wooden toys.
Hit by tariffs and by the machine, the workers in North
Czechoslovakia are, therefore, suffering. They receive no
unemployment pay in cash, but in many parts the unemployed are given a
bread card worth is 1s.3d. per week. The rest they must beg or
borrow or earn by odd jobs. Even those who have work have very low
wages.
In the Czech coal mines the wages have fallen to about
twelve to fifteen shillings a week. The decision to lower wages
led last autumn to the outbreak of a strike. Police- and soldiers
were called, and in fights many were killed. The strike failed
because the companies threatened to dismiss all the strikers-and bring
in new workers. Many Communists took part in the strike, but a
large number of the strikers were pious Catholics. It was
significant that the troops showed great sympathy with the strikers.
Back to
Germany
It is now time to leave the new State of Czechoslovakia
and return to Germany, to cross from one troubled country to another.
As I wave good-bye to the villagers the local timber merchant comes up
to me, and his words are a striking close to my visit: "I have just
heard that the Germans are going to raise their tariff still higher
against Czech timber. It comes into force this month. It will
mean my ruin.
The Europe of 1933 is tariff mad.
******
THE WESTERN
MAIL AND SOUTH WALES NEWS, February 21st, 193 3
A WELSHMAN LOOKS AT EUROPE (vii)
WORKLESS MILLIONS OF GERMANY
By GARETH
JONES
AS I was looking into a shop window in the elegant
main street of Dresden I felt someone tap my elbow nervously, and,
turning round, I saw a young worker, who begged shamefacedly for a
little money.
"What was your work?" I asked.
"Farm labourer," he answered. "So I do not get any
unemployment insurance. I can get no work on the land, and here in
Dresden it is terrible. A curse seems to have come over the
country.
"Go to the poor quarters here and you will see what
misery is. But we’ll get rid of it some day. Hitler will do
nothing. He’s ranking himself with the capitalists and is just the
tool of Hugenberg. But we workers will fight to the death against
him. Berlin is Red; Dresden is going Red; the whole country is
going Red. And it is all because we can get no work."
Unemployment and the misery which follows it are sending
millions of honest German workers into the camp of the extremists.
It is arousing among the middle class in Germany burning hatred of the
system under which they live. It is creating a tense feeling that
anything is better than the present distress. Here in Dresden,
which has a population of 650,000, nearly 200,000 men, women, and
children depend on help from the public bodies in order to live.
In most German towns nearly one-third of the inhabitants receive what
little money they have from relief and unemployment insurance.
The Means Test
If you are an unemployed young man in Germany, without
family, you receive about 4s. 6d. to 5s. per week. If you are a
man with a wife you receive about 12s. per week, with from is 1s.6d. to
3s. extra for each child. If, however, there are other resources,
such as savings or odd jobs, this sum is drastically cut down, for the
means test is. rigidly applied, and a very careful search is made into
the amount of money which each unemployed man has.
The amount of unemployment relief depends on what the
worker earned when he was in work. If he earned £1. a week he will
receive far less than the worker who earned £2 a week. There is
thus a sliding-scale. This is fairer to the skilled labourer, who
may receive nearly twice as much unemployment insurance as the
unskilled. If this system existed in Wales the skilled tin-plate
or steel worker who was paid from £3 to £5 a week would, on losing his
work, receive, under German conditions, from 10s. to 12s. a week, while
the unskilled worker with a wage of about £2 in Wales would receive
about 5s in unemployment insurance per week. In Germany, however,
wages are far lower and the worker who receives £2 10s. a week is
already in the category of well-paid employ.
The unemployment benefit only lasts 38 days, after which
the unemployed man has to obtain relief from the towns. This
places a tremendous burden upon the city finances, and leads many people
to tremble at the thought of what will happen when the cities go
bankrupt. Cologne, for example, a city of 730,000, has to maintain
an army of unemployed as large with their families as the population of
Cardiff, and spend. £3,000,000 a year on this.
A Financial
Mystery
It is a mystery to many how the city can find such a vast
sum. What will happen if the taxes, fail to bring in enough to pay
the poor relief is the anxious question asked by all. One
distinguished leader in Saxony said to me: "God help us if the towns
cannot pay the money to the unemployed. And there is danger of
this. If that happens, we shall see anarchy. There will be
an outburst of rioting and plundering which we have never seen before.
There will hardly be a shop-window unbroken in the whole of Dresden."
Investigations I have made into the way the German
unemployed live reveal a grim picture, and one is astounded that
revolutionary outbreaks of violence have so rarely occurred. One
reason for the calm and the quietness of the unemployed is probably the
under-nourishment, which does not encourage energetic action.
The average unemployed family would have a budget similar
to the following: The father, the mother, and the two children would
receive at the most 18s a week. Of this they would have to spend
about 6s on rent. About 2s. would be spent on coal, which leaves
10s. a week for four persons to live on. It-should be mentioned
here that prices are in most products slightly higher than in Britain.
Bread is dearer than in South Wales. Ten shillings a week for the
family means about 1s.6d. per day, to be spent, not only on food but
also on light, on clothes, and on shoes.
Thrifty
Housewives
A good housewife will usually divide the 1s. 6d. per day
in the following way: About 4d. will go in wool, soap, repairs and
extras, while she will spend is. 2d. on food. She will prepare the
following meals (the prices are for four persons): Breakfast: A couple
of slices of black bread, with a weak substitute coffee. Total
cost 3½d., or less than a penny each. Dinner: Potatoes, with
cabbage or thick soup. Bread is too dear for dinner. Total
cost 6d., or l½d. each. Supper: Potatoes. Cost 4½d.
This family would have no milk, and meat would be rarely
seen in the house. It must be remembered, however, that the
housewife in this case is economical and is receiving the full rate of
relief. If she were a good-for-nothing, or if the husband took his
relief money into a public-house, the. family would be on the verge of
starvation. The children, however, receive milk in school.
It would be of great interest to compare the budget of
unemployed families in South Wales with this budget of a German family.
Children Hard
Hit
Health, conditions among the children of the unemployed
are getting worse and worse. I have been shown the private reports
of teachers and of inspectors of the homes, and they make tragic
reading. Many children cannot go to school because they have no
shoes. There is a terrible lack of bed clothing in the houses.
The children come to school in the most meager of rags, and few of them
in the poorest quarters have sufficient warm clothing. Often a
child, when given a free meal, will gulp down without stopping eight
large plates of soup.
Among the former proud middle class of Germany the
distress is also great. In one city I was brought into a
restaurant where a free meal of a dish of soup containing pieces of
sausage was being given to members of the middle class who were
destitute. It was a pathetic sight. Young artists, teachers,
professors, old factory. owners who had gone bankrupt, writers with keen
intellectual faces, came in one by one for their soup.
Some of them had been wealthy, some of them bad painted
well-known pictures, some of them had received rounds upon rounds of
applause on the stage. Today they are glad to have a bite of meat.
It was striking to note that they still maintained their German pride in
a respectable appearance. Each wore a spotlessly clean stiff white
collar. One never knows in Germany whether the clean, well-groomed
man next to one in a bus is not on the verge of destitution.
Humour
Survives
The Germans still maintain a sense of humour. In my
view Germans have a tremendous capacity for humour and joke about their
troubles.
Unemployment has led to the following witticism.
One German says: "I know how to abolish 3,000,000 of the unemployed."
"How will you do that?"
"First I should put 1,000,000 to work at painting the
Black Forest white; secondly, I should make 1,000,000 build a one-way
track from Berlin to Jerusalem for the Jews to go along, and the other
1,000,000 should cover the Polish Corridor with linoleum."
The 6,000,000 German unemployed have shown remarkable
humour and courage under disastrous conditions. Unless the world
hastens, however, to break down tariff walls to rescue Europe from the
strangling grip of trade restrictions, and unless the mad militarist
rampant throughout the globe calms down, the patience of the unemployed
may come to an ends and then woe betide Europe!
******
THE WESTERN
MAIL AND SOUTH WALES NEWS, February 21st, 1933
A WELSHMAN LOOKS AT EUROPE (viii)
HOW GERMANY TACKLES UNEMPLOYMENT
By GARETH
JONES
DRESDEN.
Wales and Germany have one grave problem in common-how to
tackle unemployment. In both countries there is an army of
workless young people who feel that there is no place for them in the
world. Whether they live in Merthyr or in Berlin, in Pontypridd or
in Munich, they face the same spectre of idleness and poverty.
In South Wales isolated attempts are being made to
alleviate the boredom and the apathy of the unemployed. In Bryn-mawr,
in Trealaw, in Merthyr, and elsewhere greater activity has entered the
lives of the workless, and this has raised their spirits and benefited
the community.
In Germany the fight against the deterioration of youth
has been carried on with energy. The German Government say: "We
must bring the unemployed off the streets. We must give them hope.
We must show them that they are wanted by the State, and thus conquer
their pessimism. We must make them healthy by giving them work in
the open air. We must give them physical drill. We must
interest them in literature, in history, and in geography. We must
teach them crafts. We must use them to improve our roads, our
forests, our land, our bridges. But, above all, we must teach them
order, discipline, and loyalty to the State."
Voluntary
Labour
The spirit of those who join these camps is similar to
that of young Welshmen who seek work. A number of unemployed who
wished to offer their services were asked why they wanted to join, and
nearly all gave similar replies, To carry out these aims the German
Government has encouraged a Voluntary Labour Service, which has set up
thousands of labour camps throughout Germany. Last summer 290,000
young Germans were given work, bread, and health in these camps.
In Saxony, for example, which has about twice as many inhabitants as
Wales, there are about 600 camps with from 30 to 200 people in each.
Thus if Wales were in Germany there would be about 300 camps training
the youth of the country.
The members of the camps are all volunteers. They
work about six hours a day, some on roads, some in draining marshes,
others in clearing the results of floods, some in building sports
grounds. Besides these six hours, four hours are devoted to
lectures, discussions, sport, and physical drill. For, as the
President of the Saxon Labour Service said: "It is the man and not the
work which is important."
which ran as follows:
i. "I am sick and tired of not having enough to eat."
ii. "I am sick and tired of dragging about the house with
nothing to do."
iii. "I want to learn something."
The Work They
Do
These young men do not work fork profit, for they only
receive fourpence a day in pocket-money, the pay of the pre war German
soldier. They are given, however, plain but good food,
work-clothes, exercise, health and comradeship, and work from four to
nine months in the camp. The State subscribes 2s. per day per man,
and the cost to the Government in 1932 was about £5,000,000.
All the work done is for the public good and not for the
benefit of an individual. Urban district councils or rural
councils, co-operative societies or churches, employ the labour of the
voluntary labour camps for public works. Thus the financially
embarrassed public bodies of Germans have been able to get excellent
work done at small cost and to the benefit of the health and spirits of
the unemployed.
The camps may be set up by the private initiative of
clubs, such as the Y.M.C.A., by political groups or by societies.
There are Hitler camps, there are Protestant camps, Socialist camps, and
other kinds but in general the neutral camp, where men of all parties
and sects come together is preferred. Now, however, that Hitler is
in power, the Nazis will be favoured. In each camp there is a
leader who has been especially trained and put to a severe test, and who
is usually over 25 years of age. His influence upon the young
workers can be very great.
Unions’
Opposition
In the beginning of the movement the Trade Unions opposed
the Voluntary Labour Service, in which they saw a menace to the wage
agreements they had struggled for, and at present the Builders’ Union is
still a deadly enemy of the camps. But the Trade Unions have now
realised that it is better to give work to the unemployed, if they
volunteer for it, even at an infinitesimal pocket-money rate, than to
allow their health and moral to suffer.
Moreover, many thousands abandoned the Trade Unions in
order to be able to volunteer for the camps. Contractors also
fight against the Labour Service and accuse it of stealing their trade.
In spite of the opposition, and in spite of financial difficulties, the
movement is growing. Indeed the Hitler Government wishes to make
it compulsory and turn it into a kind of national conscription scheme.
Germany led the way in unemployment and health insurance.
Perhaps by these labour camps Germany may be leading the way to a method
of rescuing the youth of Europe from the effects of unemployment.
The German authorities are still groping in the dark, and have great
difficulties to face. But their experiments may be of great value
to areas such as South Wales which have the same unemployment problem to
tackle.
******
THE WESTERN
MAIL AND SOUTH WALES NEWS, February 22nd, 1933
A WELSHMAN LOOKS AT EUROPE (ix)
STORM OVER THE POLISH CORRIDOR
By GARETH
JONES
(NOTE. Mr. Gareth Jones travelled from Dresden via
Berlin, and across, a part of Poland, to the Free State of Danzig, where
he interviewed the leading authorities. He now describes his
return journey to Berlin.)
IN THE
AEROPLANE FLYING FROM DANZIG TO BERLIN.
At last we are off. After rushing across the
aerodrome field, and then bumping slightly, the aeroplane has left the
ground, and beneath us we see the fields, roads houses, shores, and
woods of one of the most fateful regions in all Europe.
The aeroplane is beginning to rock. Each time the
pilot tries to rise one wing goes up and the other down. I stand
up to take my overcoat off and am tossed into my seat again.
No wonder the aeroplane is two hours late. A strong
wind was blowing when Professor Haferkorn, who was once lecturer at
Aberystwyth College and mastered Welsh, brought me to the airport nearly
three hours ago. We waited in the restaurant, which had many
pictures of Bismarck. I went to buy my ticket and found that my
name was written on it as "Professor de Jong."
I was fated to remain in the Free State of Danzig, which
was torn away from Germany by the Treaty of Versailles, more hours than
I expected, for a messenger entered and announced:
"Ladies and gentleman. Due to the very strong wind,
the aeroplane had to turn back, but is now on its way, and will be two
hours late."
Historic Line
The whirr of the engine was at last heard. We went
out and saw the machine, on which was written: MOSCOW-BERLIN. The
words made one feel that one was really in Eastern Europe and going to
fly along part of the historic line Moscow-Berlin, which connects Asia
with Europe, with Communism, Capitalism, and the land of entrenched
proletarian dictatorship with that of growing Fascism.
The Moscow-Berlin plane is now rocking over the Baltic
coast. The Baltic is looking bright blue, although from the west
black storm-clouds come. If I look around I can see the city of
Danzig, which is about as large as Cardiff.
A small steamier is entering Danzig harbour, about which
diplomats have been fighting since 1919. That streak is the
Vistula. Now exactly underneath is the Monte Carlo of the North,
Zoppot. The casino and the pier can be clearly seen. Near
the sea one has a glimpse of the two prewar villas of the Crown Prince,
and one recalls that he was most popular with be Danzigers.
The Corridor
It is getting difficult to write, for the wind seems to
be growing stronger. Underneath is the railway which links Danzig
with the Fatherland. We are now flying over woods. The plane
has several times dropped suddenly and then rocked. A little snow
remains on the round.
We are leaving the Baltic-but one moment. There is
a port-one only gets a slight view of it-it does not look, a natural
harbour at all. It is Gdynia, and was recently built by Poland.
Now we are flying over the Polish Corridor. There
are more woods underneath and a lake here and there. We must have
crossed the frontier between the Danzig Free State and Poland. How
that German pilot must boil with rage when be thinks that his East
Prussia is separated from the rest of Prussia by that narrow stretch of
territory belonging to Poland and extending to the sea!
The land is very flat underneath. We are flying
about 1,000 to 1,500 feet high, and can see the peasants’ huts, some
with straw roofs, some with tiled roofs. Over there is a brick
factory-the only factory to be seen. The rest of the land is
farming land, with a village here and there, lakes, and many small pine
forests. Some of those villages are inhabited by a tribe called
Kashubes. So that is the Polish Corridor.
Forced Down
No more blue sky left now. The aeroplane is
rattling and shaking. There are more storm-clouds in front.
I am beginning to regret the excellent meal I took of pork cutlets and
pancakes. The aeroplane has just recovered from a drop in the
worst air-pocket I have ever experienced.
By a lake which is frozen over there is some timber.
It is difficult to realise that that stretch of land which has only a
few villages and woods and fields is one of the danger spots of Europe
and that millions of Germans would willingly die to win it back.
The aeroplane is tossing still more violently. This
article will have to be finished elsewhere.
STOLP: A SMALL
TOWN IN POMERANIA.
A few hours ago I had never heard of Stolp. But now
we are forced to spend the night here. I saw the passengers get
alarmed as the wings of the aeroplane seemed to go up still higher and
down. At last we saw a town to the north. The pilot flew for
it and before long we made our forced landing smoothly.
Bulwark of
Germanism
A man came rushing up, opened the door, and said:
"There’s another colossal storm coming." The pilot came out.
"Impossible to fly further; It’s dangerous," he said. "We’ve taken
an hour and a quarter to do 55 miles. The force of the wind
against us was terrific."
Thus we find ourselves in this typical Prussian town,
which has as its hero Blücher, is proud of its soldiers, and considers
itself a bulwark of Germanism near the Polish Corridor.
To-morrow we fly on to Berlin-when the storm has died
down.
One day a far more violent storm may break over the
Polish Corridor. The names Danzig, Gdynia, East Prussia will be on
the lips of all.
When that storm of national passions will break no one
knows, but the dark clouds are rapidly gathering. The forces
making for strife in this part of Europe I shall describe after the
aeroplane has taken me across the Prussian plain and has landed me in
the Tempelhofer Aerodrome, Berlin.
******
THE WESTERN
MAIL AND SOUTH WALES NEWS, February 28th, 1933
A WELSHMAN LOOKS AT EUROPE (x)
WITH HITLER ACROSS GERMANY
By GARETH
JONES
In Hitler’s Aeroplane,
Three o’clock
Thursday Afternoon,
February 23, 1933.
If this aeroplane should crash then the whole history of
Europe would be changed. For a few feet away sits Adolf Hitler,
Chancellor of Germany and leader of the most volcanic nationalist
awakening which the world has seen.
Six thousand feet beneath us, hidden by a sea of rolling
white clouds, is the land which he has roused to a frenzy. We are
rushing along at a speed of 142 miles per hour from Berlin to
Frankfurt-on-Main, where Hitler is to begin his lightning election
campaign.
The occupants of the aeroplane are, indeed, a mass of
human dynamite. I can see Hitler studying the map and then reading
a number of blue reports. He does not look impressive. When
his car arrived on the airfield about half an hour ago and he stepped
out, a slight figure in a shapeless black hat, wearing a light
mackintosh, and when he raised his arm flabbily to greet those who had
assembled to see him, I was mystified.
His Right Hand
Men
How had this ordinary-looking man succeeded in becoming
deified by fourteen million people? He was more natural and less
of a poseur than I had expected; there was something boyish about him as
he saw a new motor-car and immediately displayed a great interest in it.
He shook hands with the Nazi chief and with those others of us who were
to fly with him in the famous "Richthofen," the fastest and most
powerful three-motored aeroplane in Germany.
His handshake was firm, but his large, outstanding eyes
seemed emotionless as he greeted me. Standing around in the snow
were members of his bodyguard in their black uniform with silver
brocade. On their hats there is a silver skull and crossbones, the
cavities of the eyes in the skull being bright red.
I was introduced to these, the elite of the Nazi troops,
and then to a plump, laughing man, Captain Bauer, Hitler’s pilot, the
war-time flying hero. We then entered the great aeroplane and now
we sit far above the clouds.
Brain of the
Party
Behind Hitler sits a little man who laughs all the time.
He has a narrow Iberian head and brown eyes which twinkle with wit and
intelligence. He looks like the dark, small, narrow-headed, sharp
Welsh type which is so often found in the Glamorgan valleys. This
is Dr. Goebbels, a Rhinelander, the brain of the National-Socialist
Party and, after Hitler, its most emotional speaker. His is a name
to remember, for he will play a big part in the future.
To Hitler’s left sits a massive, fair-haired man besides
whom Hitler looks dwarf-like. This is Hitler’s adjutant. The
others in the aeroplane are secretaries, and there are five members of
Hitler’s bodyguard in their black and silver uniforms with red swastika
badges. The only two non-Nazis are another newspaper correspondent
and myself and we are the first foreign observers to be invited by
Hitler since be became Chancellor to accompany him on a flight.
Next to me sits a scarred, well-built member of the
bodyguard, who has a sense of humour and keeps ragging another member
who is sleeping. He has already offered me two boiled eggs, two
bags of chocolate, an apple and biscuits. There is nothing hard
and Prussian about my fellow-passengers. They could not be more
friendly and polite, even if I were a red-hot Nazi myself.
The chief of the bodyguard is now drinking to my health
in soda-water and grinning. He shows me his silver badge which he
wears on his breast and which shows that he has been a follower of
Hitler for thirteen years. He is obviously proud of his uniform
and points out his photograph to me in a weekly illustrated newspaper.
The Monarchists
The clouds underneath have now cleared, and we can see
the Elbe winding below. Hitler is now asleep. The sun is
shining upon the engine to the left. I take up a Nazi newspaper and I
read:
"To-morrow night Goebbels and Prince August Wilhelm are
speaking in the Sport Palace in Berlin."
Prince August Wilhelm, the son of the Kaiser! What
relations are there, I wonder, between the Monarchists and Hitler?
I recall an item of information which I picked up in Berlin. The
Kaiserin had come to Berlin to win over Hitler. A meeting was
arranged in a salon. Hitler kept the Empress waiting in the
drawing-room twenty minutes while he chatted in the corridor outside.
At last they met, but the Empress failed in her mission, and Hitler is
not yet converted to Monarchism.
Another item is: "Fifty thousand people hear Dr. Goebbels
in Hanover." I look at the vivacious little man and see that he is
reading Wilson’s Fourteen Points. His smile has disappeared, and
his chin is determined, he looks as if he were burning to avenge what
the Nazis call the betrayal of 1918. I recall the Nazi slogan:
"Retribution."
"In Memoriam"
A notice, "In Memoriam," which I next read in the Nazi
paper then gives a clue to the emotion which has been let loose in
Germany. Beneath the photograph, surrounded by a thick black line,
of a handsome young boy in a Nazi uniform I read: "The father of this
Storm Troop man, Gerhard Schlemminger, was one of the two million who
fell for Germany. The wife he left behind bravely went along her
path of duty and educated her son to be a sincere, honourable German
citizen in the decadent post-war days of confusion and vice. But
Gerhard, who gave all his energy for the freeing of Germany, was
yesterday struck dead by a murderous Bolshevik bullet."
This throws a light upon the political passions in
Germany. I look again at Hitler. He and his followers feel that
the hundreds of Nazis, such as this young boy who have died in street
battles must be avenged, and they will be ruthless in crushing Communist
opposition.
Hitler is now turning and smiling to his adjutant.
He looks mild. Can this be the ruthless enemy of Bolshevism?
It puzzles me.
The Two
Hitlers
We are now descending, however. Frankfurt is
beneath us. A crowd is gathered below. Thousands of faces
look up at us. We make a smooth landing. Nazi leaders, some
in brown, some in black and silver, all with a red swastika arm-band,
await their chief. Hitler steps out of the aeroplane. But he
is now a man spiritually transformed. His eyes have a certain
fixed purpose. Here is a different Hitler.
There are two Hitlers - the natural boyish Hitler, and
the Hitler who is inspired by tremendous national force, a great Hitler.
It is the second Hitler who has stirred Germany to an awakening.
******
The Western Mail and South Wales News
March 1st ,1933,
A Welshman looks at
Europe (xi)
BEGINNING OF GERMAN FASCISM
By....
GARETH JONES
HOTEL BASLER HOF,
Frankfurt-on-Main.
Germany is going full speed towards a
Fascist Dictatorship. Now that Hitler has gained power he will cling to
it. No considerations of constitutionalism will make him waver in his
purpose. He will even throw aside Hindenburg rather than loosen the
grip which he is gaining on Germany.
He is surrounded by men of unflinching
will, unfettered by traditions, burning with hatred of Bolshevism and
passionate in their cry of “Germany, awake!”
Who are these men? The cream of his
followers are here now in this hotel, preparing for the vast meeting
which is to stir the population of Frankfurt. When I draw the curtain
and look down into the street I see some of them guarding the hotel.
There is a police cordon drawn around and, except for the members of the
bodyguard in their black and silver uniform, there is no one in the
street outside. The members of the bodyguard are the picked few of the
hundreds of thousands of storm troops whom Hitler has led to power.
Thus Hitler has behind him a vast army
of determined young men, excellently trained. Those who are in brown
are the S.A. men, or the Storm Department men. They are the
rank-and-file. Those who are in black with silver trimmings are the
S.S. men, the special defence troops, the elite. I have just had a long
conversation with one of the leading S.S. men, who was pointed out to me
as a hero, for he had killed a Communist.
What Happened
“What happened?” I asked the
powerfully built young man, whose smile was so disarming that I found it
difficult to realise that I was talking to one who had killed a man,
although he had on his helmet a skull and crossbones. He told his story
eagerly.
“Yes, that was a rare fight. We Nazis
have a meeting-place here, and one night a number of Communist thugs
rushed in to raid us. We set to. One of them came at me and I just
took him up and crashed his skull against the piano. He was done for.
Nine Communists got wounded in that fight and I got a dagger wound in my
hand. Look at it.
“I managed to escape, but later I was
amnestied. The amnesty came on my birthday.”
Gentleness to their enemies is no
characteristic of Hitler’s hundreds of thousands of followers. The
storm troops are backed by fourteen million German citizens, and Hitler
finds himself in a strong position. He is digging himself in rapidly,
thanks to one man, Goering, who now controls
Prussia, and Prussia is two-thirds of Germany.
Goering is perhaps the most determined of Hitler’s
followers. He has already
dismissed hundreds of non-Nazi police, presidents,
officials, and Civil Servant in Prussia and replaced them with keen
Nazis. Many war heroes are now in control of the police. Goering’s
actions have amounted to a coup d’état without violence.
Law the Tool of a Party
In a few weeks the Nazis have won the key positions, and
they are not the kind of men to give them up. Goering has written a
letter to the police which practically absolves them from any blame or
responsibility if they shoot a Communist or a Socialist. The police are
to support the Nazi troops in crushing non-nationalistic elements and
the Nazi storm men are to become auxiliary police. Law is thus rapidly
becoming the tool of a party.
Equally dictatorial has been the attitude towards the
press. Responsible news papers have been banned for criticisms In this
respect Germany is beginning to tread the path of Russia and Italy.
A dictator of public opinion is to be appointed-if
opinion can be dictated to- and he is going to be the vivacious little
man who sat behind Hitler in the aeroplane, and whose dark, narrow head
an sharp brown eyes looked like those of a Glamorgan miner-Dr. Goebbels.
With the “Herr Doktor,” as he is called, I have spent several hours.
National Emotion
He has a remarkably appealing personality, with a sense
of humour and a keen brain. One feels at home with him immediately, for
he is amusing and likeable.
It is strange to think that this little man who looks so
Iberian, is a leader of the Nazi movement, which has as its basic the
supremacy of the big, blonde Nordic race. Before long he is going to
have control of the press, of the wireless, of art, as head of a new
Ministry, and he is determined to educate the whole of public opinion in
Germany along National Socialist lines.
The time has come, however, to leave for the mass
meeting. The hall, which holds 25,000, has been packed since twelve
o’clock, although Hitler is not to speak until 8.15. The “Leader” is
upstairs getting ready. Dr. Goebbels tells me that the Nazis never
prepare their speeches fully. They all speak out openly. Goebbels and
Hitler jot a few slogans on two or three pieces of paper or outline a
short plan and are usually carried away by the revivalist spirit.
Hitler is now coming down the staircase in his brown
uniform. We must go. Before long I am destined to witness one of the
most overwhelming outbursts of national emotion which history records
and the beginning of German Fascism.
******
The Western
Mail and South Wales News March 2nd,1933.
A Welshman looks at Europe
(xii)
PRIMITIVE WORSHIP OF
HITLER
---
Emotion of
National Eisteddfod at Political Meeting
By GARETH JONES
FRANKFURT-ON-MAIN,
For eight hours the biggest hall in Germany has been
packed with 25,000 people for whom Hitler is the saviour of his nation.
They are waiting, tense with national fervour. Five cars
are now rushing towards the hall. In the first sits Hitler; in the next
two open cars are the stalwart be-medalled bodyguards; then comes our
car with Hitler’s secretary. The hall is surrounded by Brown Shirts.
Wherever we go the shout resounds, “Heil, Hitler!” and hundreds of
outstretched bands greet us. We dash up the steps after Hitler and
enter the ante-chamber.
From within we hear roar upon roar of applause and the
thumping and the blare of a military band and the thud of marching,
feet. The door leading to the platform opens and two of us step on to
the platform. I have never seen such a mass of people; such a display
of flags, up to the top of the high roof; such deafening roars. It is
primitive, mass worship.
Through the broad gangway Nazi troops are marching with
banners, and as each-new banner comes there is another round of
shouting. Steel Helmets now march in with the old Imperial and
regimental flags, symbolic of the rebirth of militarism.
Pandemonium
Then Hitler comes. Pandemonium! Twenty-five thousand
people jump to their feet. Twenty-five thousand bands are
outstretched. The “Heil, Hitler,” shout is overwhelming. The people
are drunk with nationalism. It is hysteria. Hitler steps forward. Two
adjutants take off his Brown coat. There is a hush.
Hitler begins in a calm, deep voice, which gets louder
and louder, higher and higher. He loses his calmness and trembles in
his excitement. In the beginning of his speech his arms are folded and
he seems hunched up, but when he is carried away he stretches out his
arms and he seems to grow in stature.
He attacks the rulers of Germany in the past fourteen
years. The applause is tremendous. He accuses them of corruption.
Another round of enthusiasm. He whips the Socialists for having
vilified German culture. He appeals for the union of Nationalism with
Socialism. He calls for the end of class warfare. When he shouts, “The
future belongs to the young Germany which has arisen,” the 25,000
hearers leap to their feet, stretch out their right hands and roar:
“Heil, Hitler!
A Comparison With Lloyd George.
It the emotion of the National Eisteddfod exaggerated
multifold. Imagine the Welsh national feeling responding to Mr. Lloyd
George and add to bitterness of defeat, the depth of humiliation which,
Germany has gone through; the painful poverty of the middle class, the
sufferings through inflation, the rankling injustice of the War Guilt
Clause and savage political hatred, and a picture of the Hitler crowd is
there.
Imagine a speech of Mr. Lloyd George. Take away the wit,
take away the intellectual play, the gift of colour, the literary and
Biblical allusions of the Welsh statesman. Add a louder voice, less
varied in tone, a more unbroken stretch of emotional appeal, more
demagogy, and you have Hitler. Hitler has less light and shade than Mr.
Lloyd George. He has less variety of gesture. Hitler’s main motion is
to point out his right hand, which trembles. He is without the smile
and the sharp glance of Mr. Lloyd George without his hush and sudden
drop of the voice.
Mr. Lloyd
George is more of an artist and knows that life is not all emotion or
All tragedy. He lightens a grave speech with humour, as
Shakespeare brings in the comedy of life in the porters’ scene in
“Macbeth”. Hitler is pure tragedy or heightened melodrama, and reminds
one of Schiller’s “Robbers”. His only comic relief is bitter irony.
Mr. Lloyd George has a wider scale and as in a Beethoven symphony, makes
lighter mood follow or precede a tragic part. Hitler is the Wagner of
oratory, a master in repeating the leitmotiv in many varied forms, and
the leitmotiv is “The Republican régime in Germany has betrayed you.
Our day of retribution has come.” His use of the brass instruments of
oratory is Wagnerian, and he thunders out his resounding blows against
Bolshevism and against democracy.
“We Shall Do Our Duty”
Whereas Mr. Lloyd George is more complex and more subtle
and a speech of his is kaleidoscopic, changing in tone and colour from
one moment to another, Hitler is more uniform, and his oratory is in
colour one blazing red which makes the people mad.
But both orators know their audiences, and Hitler’s
speech is the speech for nationalist German. He has now ended with the
words: “I shall complete the work which I began fourteen years ago as an
unknown soldier, for which I have struggled as leader of the party and
for which I stand to-day as Chancellor of Germany. We shall do our
duty.” Again the hall resounds. He marches out and we follow into the
ante-chamber. He is wet with perspiration. From the hall we hear
25,000 voices singing “Deutschland uber Alles.”
We rush to the car. As we step out of
the hall we see thousands of blazing torches, and we drive through an
avenue of Brown Storm Troops, each man of which holds his torch in the
left hand and stretches out his right hand in adoration to the leader,
Adolf Hitler.
Such was the manifestation of Fascism in Germany. With
the shouts of “Heil, Hitler,” resounding in my ears I prepare to leave
Germany, the land where dictatorship has just begun, and to go to the
land of the dictatorship of the working class. From the country of
Fascism I now go to the home of Bolshevism. In a few days’ time I shall
be on my way Berlin across the Polish Corridor, East Prussia, Lithuania,
Latvia, until I enter the territory of Soviet Russia.
The Europe of 1933 has seen the birth the Hitler
dictatorship in Germany.
What will it see in the Soviet Union?
*******
THE WESTERN
MAIL & SOUTH WALES NEWS, Friday 24th February 1933
The Red Light in East Europe
Frontier
Quarrel Between Germany and Poland
By Gareth
Jones
Mr. Gareth Jones and Hitler.
On Thursday Mr Gareth Jones is to fly with Hitler, the
German Chancellor, from Frankfu to attend a Nazi meeting.
This was the first time Hitler had invited a foreign
observer to fly with him since he became Chancellor
Mr. Gareth Jones will describe his experience in
exclusive articles in the "Western Mail & South Wales News
BERLIN
One of the world’s most renowned journalists made a
remarkable prophecy to me, as we lunched in a restaurant just off
Unter den Linden.
I had told him of my flight across the Polish Corridor
and of the tenseness of feeling among the peoples in Danzig and East
Prussia.
"Yes," he said; "look out for trouble there. The
Germans will sacrifice everything-life, wealth, everything-to win back
that unfertile, dull patch of fields, woods and lakes. And they
will one day get the Corridor back."
"How will they do that?" I asked.
The journalist replied: "Keep your eye on the
re-organisation of the German Army. It is going to take place this
year, and the re-arming will go up steadily. In a few years’,
time-no one knows when-when the Army is strong enough, Hitler will ask
Poland to reconsider the question of the Corridor. The Poles will
say emphatically, "No!" Then in Germany a huge press campaign will be
opened against Poland.
Creating Alarm
"Germans will be fired into a blaze of indignation
against everything Polish. Rumours will be skillfully spread to
the effect that the Polish soldiers are going to invade the Free, State
of Danzig. Imagine the alarm which will electrify Germany.
To prevent Polish troops from entering Danzig, which is
German by culture, but politically under League of Nations’ suzerainty,
German Reichswehr troops will march in and occupy that city.
"Then the propaganda machine will continue its nefarious
activities. There will be frontier incidents. Some German
frontier guards will be found murdered. False documents will be
published purporting to show that Poland is about to attack Germany.
Someone in Berlin will press the button and the German troops will march
across the Corridor and reunite East Prussia with the Fatherland."
The Nazi View
That prophecy may be alarmist, but there is no doubt that
the eyes of millions of Germans are facing eastwards. This was
confirmed by my visit to the headquarters of the Nazis in the Kaiserhof
Hotel (the "Ritz" of Berlin), where I was received and entertained for
over two hours by Hitler’s private, secretary in his suite overlooking
the Chancellor’s Palace.
Of the several conversations I had with Nazis in the
Kaiserhof one struck me as being especially dangerous in its
implications in Eastern Europe. The Hitlerite said that Germany
should look towards the East of Europe, where she should have economic
and political power.
"Our National Socialistic Eastern policy," he said,
"means nothing more or less than this: that we must conquer, colonise
and settle our Germans in, the East of Europe just as the ‘Holy Roman
Empire of the German Nation’ advanced towards the East from A.D. 900 to
A.D. 1500."
Future
Battleground
The first push for such a policy would be that area which
I saw from the air a day or two ago. The panorama of Danzig,
Gdynia, the Baltic and the Polish woods and fields which seemed to roll
underneath as the aeroplane rocked and tossed is a vital clue to the
future of Europe.
That area may be a real military battle• field in the
future. It is already now a battlefield on which the Poles are
trying to smash the Germans politically and economically.
What is the quarrel between Germans and Poland?
Firstly, the Polish Corridor, which connects Poland with
the sea and cuts off Germany from East Prussia, has become for each
nation a symbol. For Germany it is a symbol of national dishonour
which must be effaced.
The German says: "It is a disgrace that a great civilised
country should be cut in two and that an uncivilised set of scoundrels
like the Poles should rule brutally over our fellow countrymen. It
is a disgrace that our defeat in the war should have led to East Prussia
standing open to attack from the Poles. Moreover, our defeat has
led to Poland’s frontier ‘coming dangerous1y near to Berlin.
Germany must have the Corridor back again. We must have the German
areas back again and not be treated like dogs.
Poland’s
Attitude
The Pole says: "For 150 years we Poles had no State.
Our land was stolen from us in the end of the Eighteenth century by the
rapacious Germans, Russians and Austrians. Poland was partitioned.
Since 1919 we are a State again, and our suffering and struggles for our
nation have been rewarded. And now Germany wishes, partition us
again, to sweep us off the face of the earth.
"The first step is the return of the so called Polish
Corridor. Once we give up that area, which is rightly and justly
ours we are lost as a nation and we will be partitioned again. No;
we will fight to the death rather than give up our territory."
Life or Death Race
The second question is Gdynia, the brand new Polish
Corridor port on the Baltic, from which coal is exported in competition
with Welsh coal in the Scandinavian countries. It is Poland’s only
port and millions of pounds have been spent on it, although there is a
first- class harbour and docks in Danzig, a few milesa way. The
competition of Gdynia is ruining Danzig, and the Danzigers are alarmed
for their existence. The Poles, wanting to become a seafaring
nation, are favouring in every way their new port and thus strangling
Danzig. Gdynia has made rapid strides, and though in 1923 it was
merely a group of fishermen’s huts. It exported in 1932 over
4,000,000 tons of coal. In 1932 this former village and now
mushroom port exported 650,000 more tons of coal than did the vast port
of Danzig. The race between Gdynia and Danzig is a race of life
and death between the old German city and the newly-arisen Polish
outpost on the sea, and, with the help of powerful backers, the Polish
port is winning. Gdynia is thus for the Poles also a symbol-the
symbol of national triumph over a proud German city, and Poles would lay
down their lives rather than acknowledge defeat and give up Gdynia.
The Tariff War
The third bone of contention is the city of Danzig-once a
part of the German Empire, now under the suzerainty of the League of
Nations. Danzig has a Customs Union with Poland, but also has the
right to import from Germany certain foods which are not allowed to be
imported into Poland, for there is still a Tariff war waging between
Germany and Poland. The Poles accuse the Danzigers, of taking a
mean advantage and of sending goods imported from Germany further, into
Poland, thus providing unfair competition against Polish manufacturers.
This has given the Poles a remarkably good pretext for blocking the
import of goods from Danzig—although there is a Danzig-Polish Customs
Union-and of hitting Danzig manufacturers. Thus the petty war
continues and both sides suffer.
Powers Should
Act
There is no doubt that the Poles have acted badly towards
the Germans in their territories. On the other hand the Nazis in
Poland have no desire, to co-operate with the Poles and cause great
trouble.
To remedy this it is easy to say: "The Corridor must be
revised." But the question is, "How?" If the Corridor is
given back to Germany means immediate war, for the Poles would fight to
the last drop of blood. There is no easy solution for the Corridor
question; but one thing can be done. The Poles should be forced by
the diplomats of the world, and especially by the British Government, to
behave like gentlemen, to carry out their treaty obligations, to make
full use of Danzig, and to stop oppressing the peoples over whom they
rule.
Even then, however, the conflict remains irreconcilable,
and the red light of danger shines in the East of Europe.
******
Western Mail
LOOKING AT EUROPE
LETTER OF CRITICISM
Position of Minority Races in
Czechoslovakia
Sir,—Mr. Gareth Jones should remember that in
Czechoslovakia the Slovaks do not by any means rank as a minority
race—they are absolutely equal in state to the Czech.
That must entail some modification of
the statement that “only one-half of the population are the masters and
are seeking to spread their power as rapidly as possible.”
The Czechs and Slovaks together form
two-thirds of the total population.
The Minorities - German and Magyar—
have ample facilities for education in their own native tongue. There
are 9,419 Czechoslovak, 3,287 German, and 794 Magyar primary schools in
the Republic. The proportion of minority schools is surely generous
rather than the reverse.
The Germans have a German university
in Prague and two German technical school, one in Prague and one in
Bruno It is a travesty to say that “the Czechs are now taking their
revenge” and are oppressing the minority races.
It is provocative to say that the
Czech’s “weapon is the law.” There is every justice for a German in
Czechoslovakia as indeed for any other national - perhaps even more
justice in Czechoslovakia than for a German in Germany itself in these
days.—Yours faithfully,
H.C. GILL.
3,Old Queen-street,
Westminster,
S.W.I7 Feb. 21.1933
*****
THE FINANCIAL
NEWS, Wednesday 1st March 1933
WHITHER
GERMANY?
Hitler moving towards Dictatorship
By Gareth
Jones
No 1
SINCE January 30, when Herr Hitler became Chancellor of
the Reich, Germany has made rapid strides towards a Fascist
Dictatorship. The National Socialists have lost no time in digging
themselves in, and they are determined to cling to power, whatever
obstacles may be put in their way. Hitler is in an exceedingly
strong position. He has a personality which can arouse vast
audiences to a frenzy of nationalist passion and the support of thirteen
to fourteen million voters.
More important still than the votes of far more than
one-third of Germany is the force of Defence Troops (S.S. men) and of
the Storm Troops (S.A. men) numbering many hundreds of thousands of men,
well trained in street fighting and moved by a profound devotion to
their leader and to the national cause. Bound by no legalistic
scruples and scorning constitutionalism, these men will form a strong
barrier to any opposition movement from the Left.
Such is the basis of the National-Socialist power.
It has been broadened and deepened by the grip which Herr Goering, as
Reichs Commissar for Prussia, has gained over this State, which forms
two-thirds of the Reich. A thorough cleansing-the word itself is
reminiscent of another land ruled by a Dictatorship-has removed from the
police ranks those police presidents whose views smacked of Marxism, and
their place has been taken by men whose devotion to country and to Party
is greater than their respect for the minutiae of the law. The
police force, which was once considered a stronghold of Social
Democracy, has thus be come a powerful National-Socialist weapon, which
Herr Hitler will not relinquish easily.
Crushing
Communism
Herr Goering has not taken long to impress upon the
Prussian police that they are to crush any Communist opposition with
ruthlessness. The consequences for any action which leads to
bloodshed he takes upon himself, and he exhorts the police to give
support to the National forces such as the Storm Troops. To
whatever injustices it may lead, such a step strengthens the power of
the National-Socialist Party.
Herr Goering’s latest decree, which will make the Nazi
Storm Troops into an auxiliary police force, will also lead to the
dominance of the Nazis. The reorganisation of the political police
which is now in progress seems to point to the establishing of a régime
similar to the G.P.U. However repugnant such a body and such
political control of the police may be to liberal people, there is no
doubt that it places the country under firm control.
The powerful lever of political propaganda is rapidly
becoming a preserve of the Nazis. Already such a moderate and
balanced paper as the "Germania" was banned for a short period.
Even "Tempo," a paper of the yellow press, disappeared temporarily from
the streets of Berlin for having published the economic report that
shares were depressed.
The National-Socialist propaganda has been masterful in
its simple emotional appeal. Shortly it will have a new
mouthpiece, for a Ministry is to be formed under the brilliant Dr.
Goebbels, which is to control the Press, the wireless and the films.
Control over these organs means, with a docile people like the Germans,
who are accustomed to obey authority, control over a great portion of
public life.
What Can They
Do?
In face of odds like these, what can the Social Democrats
and the Communists do? Revolts would be instantly crushed by the
Reichswehr and the police. A General Strike is out of the question, for
there are enough Nazi unemployed to fill the vacant places. The
Trade Unions have not extensive funds and are suffering from loss of
membership. Moreover, the Left Parties do not possess a. single
great personality like Hitler who can galvanise their members.
It is probable that after the Elections the Communist
Party will be made illegal. That many of the workers now in the
Nazis will be disillusioned is probable, but both the Russian and the
Italian dictatorships have shown that once a powerful and ruthless party
has, got into office, it can remain long, in spite of disillusion.
There remains the problem of the relations between the
Nationalists and Hitler. It is probable that the struggle between
the two wings in the Cabinet will begin shortly after the Elections and
that the Chancellor will demand at least six places in the Cabinet.
Even an alliance with the Centre is possible. But before March 5th
it is difficult to prophesy, and one can but repeat the statement made
frequently in Berlin business circles that the National-Socialists would
rather throw aside President Hindenburg than loosen their control.
What of their policy? So far, it consists of one
main point, which is, as one Nazi told me, that of "giving Germany a
bath." It is largely internal and aims at rooting out Marxism.
What their economic policy will be one has no inkling, except that an
attempt will be made to introduce compulsory labour service, a move
which will be hampered by financial difficulties. The economic
utterances of members of the party in the past point to an enthusiasm
for ‘autarchy." It is a principle of national-Socialist economics
that each nation shall produce upon its own soil or in an area over
which it rules everything which it needs for its economic existence.
Nazi writers state that military and naval policy,
foreign policy and trade must be conceived as one unity. Exports,
in their view, must play a secondary part, and it was, they maintain, a
grave mistake for Germany to enter upon the field of world economy.
The highest aim of businessmen should be a closed national area and not
a world economic system.
Following the line of this thought, Nazi economists claim
that Germany must expand to the East, must follow the policy of
colonising Eastern Europe, which was the German policy of 900 A.D. to
1500 AD. While not relinquishing the right to colonies, they lay
the greatest stress upon settlement along the Baltic Coast and in the
territory now belonging to Poland. The Nazis state that it will be
in Britain’s interest to allow Germany to expand to the East.
Strong Fleet
and Powerful Army
These views, it must be remembered, are not those
officially held by the present Government, but are the general views of
the National-Socialist economists. presumed, wi1l be built up as
rapidly as possible. In the meantime, the foreign policy of the
Government remains the same and will no doubt continue along the same
lines. The National-Socialist hatred of Marxism need not extend to
the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, and while relations with Italy
will grow warmer, there is no reason to suppose that there will be any
new foreign political constellation.
However dangerous the autarchic and Eastern policies of
the Nazi writers may be, they will be modified by pressure of events.
Chancellor Hitler is recognised by businessmen as a man who can rapidly
grasp a situation and who will be strong enough to throw aside dogmas
and theories when confronted with reality. In business circles
there is little fear that the Nationalist-Socialists will attempt any
unbalanced economic measures, and there is hope that they will succeed
in restoring order and political quiet.
Herr Hitler is looked upon as reasonable in economic
matters, and it is recognised that his main task will be internal and
will be the setting up of a firm and stable Government. There is
confidence among bankers and industrialists that in spite of his
complete lack of an economic programme, he will put an end to the
continuous chopping and changing from which Germany has suffered in
recent years. There is, nevertheless, a grave danger that the
narrow agrarian tariff measures which Herr Hugenberg, the Economic
minister, has adopted will be difficult to undo and will have serious
reactions upon industry and upon exports.
******
THE
FINANCIAL NEWS, Thursday 2nd March 1933
WHITHER
GERMANY?
The Clash be Industry and Agriculture
By Gareth
Jones
No 2
THE National Government in Germany has declared itself
clearly against any currency experiments. Dr. Bang, the State
Secretary of the Reichs Economic Ministry, has stated unequivocally:
"There will be no experiments in any sphere…" He has said: "Whoever
believes that our situation can be improved by open or concealed
inflation is either a demagogue or a fool."
The leaders of the present Government recognise that any
large-scale inflationary measures would lead to an unprecedented panic.
Dr. Luther, as President of the Reichsbank, is a bulwark against
currency experiments, and it is to be hoped that the autonomy of the
Reichsbank will remain absolutely unimpaired by the National-Socialists.
The lesson of inflation has been well learnt by Germans, and they look
askance at British industrialists who toy with inflationary ideas.
Economic
Improvement
Orthodoxy in currency matters will certainly be a help to
the National Government. The new régime is also helped by the
hopeful psychology which has made itself felt since last autumn.
The feeling of panic which impressed visitors in 1931 has disappeared,
and one rarely hears those doleful prophecies of the "breakdown of
civilisation" and the "collapse of the economic system" which were once
the commonplace of every luncheon conversation.
From last autumn to the end of the year there was a real
improvement in the German economic situation, and, although there is now
complete stagnation on account of uncertain political conditions, the
atmosphere of hopefulness has not completely evaporated.
The better industrial conditions were reflected on the
Stock Exchange. To take two representative shares, Vereinigte
Stahlwerke, which once dropped to 107/8, rose to 35 towards the end of
the year, while Siemens & Haiske, which had reached the low level of
951/4, recovered to 127. The better spirit engendered by improving
production still lingers on, in spite of the hush which has descended
upon the Stock Exchange and on business life as a whole.
The unemployment figures are, compared with last year,
not unsatisfactory. On February 13 there were 6.047,000 on the lists.
This is 80,000 less than last year. The increase in unemployment
since the end of January was 33,000, compared with an increase of 85,000
in the same period last year. Although little comfort may be
gained from such a large total, the figure shows that from 1932-33
unemployment has, apart from seasonal influences, marked time, and has
not gathered the momentum which was feared.
The new Stillhaltung Agreement is also satisfactory to
German bankers and is considered an improvement upon the old. The
result is held to be a fair compromise. The reduction of interest by 4
per cent, is welcomed, and it is pointed out that this means a saving in
foreign currency of 20 million marks.
Here, however, the favourable features of the German
economic situation end. The first difficulty which confronts the
new régime is the state of German finances, from the Reich down to the
smallest towns. The total deficit of the Reich at the end of the
budgetary year 1932 was 2,070,000,000 marks. The receipts from
taxation have steadily declined. The issue of "taxation notes"
based upon the expectation of a recovery will be a burden upon the
finances in the future. Moreover, the guarantees which the
Government has undertaken (e.g., for agriculture, for exports to Russia,
for shipping, banks, &c.), amounted on October 1, 1932, to 2,146,000,000
Rm. The finances of the towns are not in a happy state, and great
fear is expressed as to what will happen if the towns are unable to pay
the poor relief. The burden of unemployment relief falls mainly
upon the towns and not upon the Reich. Cologne, for example, has
to support over 210,000 out of a population of 730,000, or 28.4 per
cent. of the population.
The financial task facing the new régime is a gigantic
one, and one fails to see how the Government will be able to obtain the
funds to carry out any vast scheme of land settlement or of compulsory
labour service.
The part which the Government is to play in industry is
another problem which the National-Socialist economists will have to
solve, and so far they have offered no explanation of their attitude.
With control over a great section of the heavy industry, through
Gelsenkirchen, with power over the Danat Bank and, indeed, far-reaching
intervention in the whole banking system, and with many other links with
industry, the German Government has inaugurated, as one German banker
described it, "a socialistic system led by capitalists." What will
Herr Hitler do in this question? It will be a difficult problem for
him.
Industry
v. Agriculture
But the most dangerous struggle in German economic life
which Herr Hitler will have to face will be that between industry and
agriculture. Herr Hitler will have to decide whether he is for
autarchy, which would mean the victory-but a victory without gains-for
the agriculturists, or a world economy, which would mean victory for the
industrialists.
In the first month of the National Government, the
agrarians have won all along the line. Their champion, Herr
Hugenberg, has acted in the economic sphere with as much ruthlessness as
Herr Goering has acted in the political sphere. Tariff increases
upon agricultural products have followed rapidly upon each other.
On February 8 the tariffs upon cattle, meat and lard were increased, and
soon after higher duties were placed upon many foodstuffs, including
fish. The tariff upon timber and wooden goods was then raised.
Herr Hugenberg has thus succeeded in alienating every one
of Germany’s best customers, who will have their ability to purchase
German industrial goods considerably curtailed. The difficulties
of Germany’s greatest debtor country, the Soviet Union, are increased.
Measures are being planned towards the further protection of the German
market against the import of iron from Belgium and Japan as well as of
other industrial products.
The principles guiding the Government in this problem
were well defined by Herr von Rohr, State Secretary in the Reich
Ministry of Food, when he stated: "We expect the German leather industry
to use German hides, the linen industry to use German flax, the paper
industry to use German pulp, the German soap industry to use German fat.
Where a voluntary policy does not suffice, the National Government will
employ State compulsion.’
Cause For
Concern
Such autarchy run mad augurs ill for the future of German
industry. The Government forgets that a large percentage of the
population lives directly or indirectly from foreign trade, and that in
1930-31, 35.5 per cent. of the net production of German industry was
exported. By Herr Hugenberg’s intensification of tariff madness a
severe blow is dealt to industry, which will lead to a reduced
consumption of agricultural products, thus returning like a boomerang to
hit the Agrarians. Costs of production will increase.
Exports will be gravely impaired.
The triumph of the Agrarians in February, 1933, fills one
with the deepest concern for German exports, augurs an increase in
unemployment (let us hope that the reliability of German statistics will
be maintained by the Nazis), and unless the industrialists succeed in
influencing Herr Hitler, leads one to the belief that Herr Hugenberg’s
policy is injuring greatly both Germany and world trade.
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