Evening Star Newspaper, June 19, 1922, Page 4

Life’s Darkest Moment Em A RE 25¢ CITyY T AT To The PAID FOR EVERY STRAY DoG | .BROUGHT To THE BE KILLED = By ORMER oF i ) Boysor °* PORIA: WARD oF WiLL BE b . POUND To e A\t > i Copyright. 1922 H. T Webster GERMAN ABILITY TO PAY REPARATIONS DOUBTED Peace Treaty Has Taken Third of Pre-War Capital and 2,500,000 Men—Food Impor- tations Serious Financial Drain. 2 i< another of Mr. Moderwell's cles on present-day eonditions in Germany BY HIRAM K. MODERWELL. of The Star and Chi. News.) LIN, Germany, May 12.—Can ny pay the war indemnity? The smoking chimneys and the bubbling champagne xive the impression that But there are certain fur- facts, easily ascertainable, which have & bearing on the ques- tion. First, labor is not so productive in Germany as it was before the war. 1n some branches of industry, such as coal mining, labor, under great pres- sure, has increased its output per man per hour above the pre war level. But this is overbalanced by slow- wowns in other industries and by the «ight-hour day, which is universal in German industry, so that the output per man per year is under the pre- war level The most striking decrease in pro- ductivity is in the field of agriculture. After all allowance has been made for the loss of agricultural territory due to peace, it remains true that tha total agricultural produce, the to- tal of ground under cultivation and the yield per acre are all) below nor- mal.” Various explanations given are these: Lack of man-power, deteriora- tion of the ground due to neglect and inadequate fertilization during the war, change from essentlal to luxury s. Perhaps the controlling factor the self-sufficie of the farms Germ nd their antagon to the cities Whatever the cause, its effect on reparations is of first importance. If Germany cannot feed herselt she must purch: food abroad with money which would otherwise be available for reparations. Much Deterloration Due to War. Again, Germany's material plant de- teriorated during the wiar. No doubt this has been made good in ail the large industries, but the money spent n replacement was unavailable for arations. jermany lost through the war and the peace of Versailles an eighth ot her territory and population, but this included, according to recent official English estimates, a quarter of her coal and four-fifths of her iron ore. Still worse is her loss of 2,500,000 able-bodied men. Nearly all the wealth which once flowed to Germany from shipping and investments abroad has been wiped out. The income on this alone would be upward of 2,000,000,000 gold marks vearly. It is true that Germany has recently replaced a considerable part f her merchant marine, but it has me too late for her to reap big profits. It is & reasonable estimate, support- ed by considerable data, that Ger- many has lost a third of her pre-war capital wealth. With everything working at its best, she can produce only two-thirds of the wealth she produced in pre-war da Gormany. then, must support seven- eighths of her prewar population with two-thirde of her previous equipment worked by a gqtaff diminished by 2,500,000 workers. With this has come an unexpected diminution in the food supply and the need to pur- chase food and industrial raw ma- terfals abroad at high prices. The consequence of these conditions is evident in the avallable figures on exports, although these are incom- plete and not always reliable. Eng- lish officlal authorities report that in 1920 Germany attained less than a third of her 1913 exports of iron and iron alloys and only two-thirds of her prewar exports in machinery and electro-technical products. These lat- ter are the characteristic manufac- tures of Germany; in other branches the showing must be still worse. Yet in mnearly all industrie is well known, Germany has been working at the peak of her capacity. The upshot of It is that ever since the armistic, except for two months last winter, Germany has imported more than she has exported. Obvi- ously, there Is no surplus here for the payment of reparations. paid reparations. ion to deliveri part, if not the larger part, of these was’ bought in America when mark was comparatively high. on the expectation that Germany would | “surely come back.” Partly German: | got the money by pawning silver | from the refchsbank reserve; part by the purchase (for paper marks of gold fn German hands: partly by. | theforced sale of government de- posits abroad; partly by surrender- ing a portion of the gold reserve of the reichsbank, and partly by a small foreign loan on government credit. These operations caunot be repeat- ed on a large scale. There are not many suckers left who will buy paper | marks on speculation. There are no | weaithy investors whe will loan large | sums of money to a government al- ready on the financial rocks and un- able to pledge a single material se- curity (since everything is already pledged as security to the allies under the treaty of Versailles). The gov- | ernment dare not make further raids on the reichsbank reserve. No More Cash Avaflable. Cash reparations, then, have hither- to been paid partly by foreigners and partly by the alienation of Ger- many’s capital. But not at all from Germany’'s current income. It is pos- sible to go further and point out that Germany would have needed even this to balance her home account had she not been selling cheap goods abroad. In this sense Americans and others have again been paving Ger- many’s reparation bills. Indeed, wouid hardly be wrong to say that the Germans are the only peopie who have not paid reparations. But ia it not possible for Germany to cut down her imports and use the money thus saved to pay reparations In other words, should not German be compelled to reduce her standard of living? Here we leave economics and enter the fleld of social psychology and eco- nomics. Mr. Rathenau asserts that Germany's imports have consisted ex- clusively of necessities, raw materials and food—save for those luxuries which the allies have forced Germany to buy. Yet one may argue that the Germans. who bear the moral re- sponsibility for the war, should be obliged to live like the Hindoo peas- ant on a few grains of rice a day, if necessary to pay their just debts. But how far this process could be pushed before leading to a disastrous outbreak of violent bolshevism is a question not to be answered by statistics. The means of coerclon, too, are still & puzale to the allies. Ali we know is that the standard of liv- ing for the masses is materiglly be- low the pre-war figure and that peo- pie will fight rather than have their standard of living cut very far. My impression Is that if the standard of the working class were forced much lower there would be trouble. The capital tax and the forced loan are being discussed or attempted. But it is already clear that few peopie are able to make their payments in cash. They must either borrow the money on security, leading to further infla~ tion, or they must deliver negotiable papér, which must be sold in the open market abroad before the allies ca; realize on it. Informal inquiries have shown that foreign investors are not_likely to purchase many such se- | curities “at: one time. especially in view of Germany's uncertain future. But could not Germany pay her debts straight out of her capital? To WE SPECIALIZE on schesl and chureh fumiture. A bentwood chairs and_folding in stock -un“-.%u:.:-o of puniturs; T T ‘Whalesale Pursiture Mtn T4 Northeast cor. 14th & T Sts. Available July 1st Apply J. E. Chamberlain 715 14th St. the T = 4 i | a certain extent this \ 4 [This is another of Mr. Mowrer's series of articles on the relations between the United States and the other mations of the world.] BY PAUL SCOTT MOWRER. Special Correspondence of The Ntar and Chi- cago Daily News. PARIS, May 18.—The second great national prejudice which tends to dis- tort.our vision of the realities of the present Is our traditional fear of Europe and of European complica- tions. This fear, mot only in our early years, but right up to 1914, has been more fully warranted than most Americans understand. To keep out of Burope's quarrels, and at the same time to profit by them on every occa- ston, expanding and - fortifylng our- seives at Europe's expense—such has been our wise policy. Looking back from our present se- cure situation, it is difficult for us to realize the dangers which surrounded our young independence of a century and a half ago. As colonies we had en necessarily involved in all of Great Britain's wars, sometimes agains our own interest. AS a sov- ereign state, ill-consolidated and shaken within by venomous partisan- ship, we found ourselves still hemmed the colonial frontiers of great powers—Britain _to_ the n to the south, with Franc 3 P It is not possible to know (to mention the paradoxical point raised by Mr. Bass and Prof. Moulton of Chicago) how much reparations the allles are willing to receive. It is possible only to say that under present conditions, economic and po- litical. no way has yet been found to enable or compel Germany to pay more than a trifling proportion of her reparations bill. v skin odors. happening. “A few German editor to me, cced tice that the rent on the apartment i I am occupying was from the first of the month no longer payable to Herr but to Herr Wu Ting Chu” had happened was that the owner. pressed by repara-; s, had sold the property to rt collections and pri- German capital transfer to rge scale would not solve the reparations puzzle. The apital would be of no value except s it produced wealth. It would not necessarfly produce more wealth be- cause the name of the owncr had changed; it might possibly producej 3 less. And the problem of marketing ; the properties in huge amounts would ; be nearly insoluble. What Is the Conc n? Is it the conclusion that Germany cannot pay the reparations demanded? That she can pay nothing at all? No. There is certainly a large quantity of untouched wealth belonging to Ger- man industrialists abroad. But it is infernally hard to get at. It would seem that the Wirth government is making a sincere effort. But it has the allies on a | been found almost impassible, for ex- ample, to prevent a German exporter from selling goods cheaply to a Dutch confederate in Holland, who will resell them at world-market prices and deposit the profit under his own name, but really to,the credit of the German. It is not possible to know the amounts of such holdings or whether, if they could be seized, it would not destroy the Germans biity fo "purchase new raw ma- |} terials. It is not possible to know how far the German standard of living can be forced down without provoking bolshevism. It is not possible to know how much richer Germany will enabled” to exploit Rus- T S e —— + 8-Free June June June June June 26—“Listening In” On Success. June 27—Vibrating To Prosperity. 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Come and Find Yourself! 7 Viewed as National Peril ever alert to regain its lost foothold. In addition, as an experiment in de- mocracy, wearoused the malicious en- mity of all the crowned heads In Eu- rope, for they foresaw that the new form of government set up across the sea was a hard moral blow at the foundations of their own power. We had thus to fear, in the most imme- diate way, both for our form of go ernment and for our independence and territorial Integrity. As colonies we had experienced one | kind of “European entanglement. As a nation, still bound to France by a sort of permanent defensive alll- ance, we soon experienced another. No sooner were we free than French diplomacy tried to establish over us a kind of benevolent protectorate. This menace was scarcely abated when the outbreak of the French revolutionary tened us with new perils. we needed above all was a perjod of qulet in which to complete our consolidatio But the French revolutionary go ernment considered that both because of the similarity of its democratic aims to ours and because of the al- liance, we were bound to take part In its fervent republican crusade against Europe. A large element in our population was responsive to the French appeal, and it was with th greatest difficulty that Washington common sense kept us out of the tor- rent, which, if we had entered it, would doubtless soon have encom- passed our rulnation. The longer the revolutionary wars and their Napo- leonic sequel continued the more clearly did our leaders realize the immensity of the peril from which we had so narrowly escaped. It was out of this impressive early experience that Washington's warning against “permanent alllances” and Jefferson warning against ‘“entangling -alli ances” were derived. is delightful | PEYOTE EATING NE W DRUG CRAZE American History Provides Valued Example of Danger-| on {be mine’ remtratiins) e Bouth + ousiRedlities That Should Be Faced, ' Says Mowrer. r {the fruit of a cactus plant, the AMONG INDIANS OF SOUTH DAKOT: A new dope craze—peyote eatin taken such hold of the Indians about ‘revolting. Many Instances have al- ready been called (o tne attention of | the authorities of husb, nd wives having been separated as & yesult of the peyote debauches, and ' the de- bilitating mental and physical results the drug are already beginning to show in hundreds of the younger generation of the Indiang. Spreading north from the Mexican border during the past five years the craze entered South Dakota from Nebraska, where there aro said to be Dakota as to create a problem which those who are interested in the wel- fare of the red man view with grave apprehension. The peyote bean is which grows along the Mexican border. It is known as the Indian cocaine and has practically the same effect as that drug. Eaten by the Indisns under any ctrcumstances it has de- moralizing effects, mentally and mor- ally as well as physically. To com- South Dakota, been coupled religlous ceremonials _which combine ancient Indlan superstitions with Christian rites, and the craze is now in full sway among hundreds of the naton's warde in the mozth- west. Saturday Night Orgles. Saturday night has become the fa- vorite occasion for these peyote or- Gathering in tents or huts, the at from thirty to forty of beans, following which they begin to see visions. 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