GIVE THEM ENOUGH ROPE

Once more the swing of the Nazi pendulum has been too powerful for the conservative forces within the party, and German financial magnates may very well be devoured by the same Frankenstein monster that they created when they gave their support to the Hitlerites in 1932. With conservative Horace Greeley Haljmar Schacht in the economic saddle of the Reich, Thyssen and his cohorts were comparatively sccure, but big business interests are not those of the masses of the NSDA, and it was only a question of time before pressure from below would remove Schacht with the stamp of Hitler's approval from above.

General Goering, supported by Der Fuchrer and the forces of German agriculture, has long voiced his program of small-farm subsidies, increased governmental expenditures for armaments and if necessary, devaluation of the currency. The result of his scheme would be to shift the financial burden from agriculture to industry. By this method the radical Nazis hope to throw a sop to the peasant and petty burgeois element, which has been clamoring for fulfillment of the socialization planks of the party, and speed up the production of arms and munitions.

Germany's financial status has never been very secure since the World War, and much careful planning was needed during the depression years. With the advent of Hitler, Schacht used every clever economic device with which he was familiar, in order to maintain a favorable trade balance. His greatest problem was to meet increased governmental expenditures and still keep the budget balanced. This he did despite boycotts, only through exchange manipulations and repudiation of foreign loans. However, now that Goering has authority to control all ministries connected with raw materials and exchange, Germany is slated for an orgy of spending and an era of rapidly mounting debt, that will bring the inevitable collapse nearer. Buxom housewives and stolid farmers were forced to count the pfennigs carefully under early Nazi economy, but the old belt will have to be pulled in several notches more, when the General and his satellites, knowing little about the complexities of international finance, are let loose on the already wavering currency.

General business and the 'little man' are in for hard knocks in the near future with the possibilities of another inflation and reckless spending on more and more armaments. Thus facism is carried along on its own tidal wave. Hitler close-by follows Mussolini.