Evening Star Newspaper, August 18, 1935, Page 29

Editorial Page Civic Activities Part 2—10 Pages \ GERMAN-POLISH PEACE THREATENED BY DANZIG Free City Seeks to Force Hitler Into Intervening in Behalf of Vanishing Trade. EDITORIAL SECTION The Sunday Star WASHING BY FRANK H. SIMONDS. URING recent weeks Ameri- can interest has been so com- pletgly centered either in the latest phrase of the domestic New Deal or the newest crisis in the Ethiopian affair that scant attention has been bestowed upon the slow de- At the same time Nazi expenditure had produced a currency crisis, be- cause it had compromised the situa- tion of the local currency, which was distinct from the Polish zloty. What the Danzigers were after, ob- viously, was to force Hitler, against | his will, to intervene. They saw their | velopment of still another danger in |fate as inescapable unless they were Eurcpe. Little by little, however, the | permitted to rejoin the Reich. With- dispute between the Danzig Free | out German aid they could not long State and Poland has crept into the | hold out against the economic pressure headlines, and today it threatens to|of Poland. which now proceeded to become a major peril to European | close its own frontiers to imports from peace. What is interesting and novel about this Danzig episode is the fact that | Danzig and to divert all of its com- merce to Gdynia. Unless Germany intervened Danzig would presently the present crisis is desired neither | have to surrender and would then be by Germany nor by Poland. Hitler's | compelled to abandon its policy of re- activities in Austria last Summer | sistance to Polish penetration, which and Mussolini’s projects in Ethiopia | had continued ever since 1919. at the present hour were and are the | But if Hitler intervened formally, expressions of deliberate purpose. The | then, of course, the Polish-German Reichsfuehrer was attempting to de- | truce would come to an end, Warsaw stroy Austrian independence, and the | would necessarily have to return to the Duce is trying to transtorm Ethiopia | French orientation, and Germany into an Italian colonial possession. would be encircled by hostile States. Clash Not Desired Now. If he refused to intervene, then he But neither Hitler nor the heirs | would expose himself to a deadly at- of Pilsudski—and notably Col. Beck, | tack on the home front because of who directs Polish foreign policy— his abandonment of a German out- desire a clash over Danzig at the |post. Thoroughly aroused by recent present time. Two years ago Hitler | events, the Poles were now certain to and Beck made their non-aggression | press the issue with Danzig. to de- past, which remains the most consider- | mand the right of their nationals to able achievement of both in the field | settle and do business in the city and of foreign affairs. Hitler, eager to| obtain a free hand to deal with Cen- | tral European issues, and even more | anxious to break up the close rela- | tions between Paris and Warsaw, pro- posed that the queston of the Polish Corridor, which had menaced Euro- pean peace ever since the Paris Peace | Conference, should be adjourned for | a decade and that Poland and Ger- | many should agree not merely to a | Ppolitical truce, but also to economic co-operation. | Beck, for his part, welcomed the proffer for two reasons. France had recently declined to join Poland in a war of prevention to restrain German ' rearmament, and the Left govern- ment, now in control in Paris, had disclosed on more than one occasion an unwillingness to continue to guar- antee Polish possession of the Cor- ridor at the price of permanent bad relations with Germany. Not unrea- sonably the Poles felt that their French ally might sacrifice them at some future time in the hope of arriving at an agreement with Ger- many which would establish French security. Terrific Blow to Danzig. Neither in Berlin nor in Warsaw did this non-aggression pact awaken general enthusiasm. For the Prus- sians it meant at least a temporary abandonment of the issue nearest to their hearts, namely, the suppression of the Corridor. For many Poles it meant losing French support perma- | | other smaller cities recovered by thus by colonization to obtain eventual control. Hitler Avoids Decision. That is the way the situation stands at the present moment. So far Hitler has hung back and avoided any decisive step. But it is not to be disguised that the Danzigers have; found strong if more or less con- cealed, support from Germany. Nor | is it less evident that she Poles have become increasingly incensed and have reached the point where only a surrender by Danzig will satisfy them. Sooner or later, therefore, Hitler will have to decide whether to challenge domestic criticism by keep- ing faith with Poland or to invite | new foreign complications by an open support of Danzig which will drive Poland back into the ranks of the active opponents of the Reich The situation of the Danzigers themselves, however, has become so desperate that they are bound to go to any lengths to force Hitler’s hand. And no cne who has not visited Dan- zig in the post-war years can even vaguely dream of the state of mind | of the inhabitants of this fascinating town, wholly German in culture and | spirit, which sees itself threatened by the fate that has already over taken Bromberg, Posen and various BY ALBIN E. JOHNSON. ARIS—Europe, both officially and privately, is changing its mind about the United States and Americans. Almost imperceptibly this change has come about—imperceptible to expatriates who have lived on the Poland in 1919. All of these towns once possessed German majorities, but now their Teutonic elements have dwindled to nothing. And a similar nently while winning at best only a | Slav tidal wave beats steadily upon respite from German attack. Never- | theless the pact was made and be- | came the basis of German and Polish | policy thereafter. The question of | the Corridor was effectively elimi- | nated from the field of immediate | conjroversy, better trade relations | were established, and Poland, on the! one hand, resigned all concern for German action in Central Europe and on the other resisted both French and Soviet pressure to join in an | Eastern Locarno. the gates of Danzig. Struggle Seven Centuries Old. This struggle which is again flam- | ing up has been in progress for seven centuries. It opened Wwith the vic- tory of the Teutonic knights in the thirteenth century, which was marked by the destruction of the Slav popula- continent since the armistice, but but periodic visitors. | Fifteen years ago an American could have anything he wanted in most countries of Europe—even in | Germany, Austria, Bulgaria and Tur- | key, which composed the “defeated nations.” Of course. there were a few glaringly evident to those who are; tion of Danzig. In the fifteenth cen-i tury the Poles gained the upper hand | spots where Americans weren't ap- and thenceforth, until the first par- | preciated. Italy was peeved because tition more than three centuries President Wilson had blocked her TON, D. C, SUNDA Envy Our | formity with the policies of the party | { in power. Therein lies one of the fundamental differences between the American the- ory of democracy and European politi- cal psychology. The Italian, the Ger- man, the Russian, the Polish, and to a very large extent even the British and the French governments ‘“pre- pare” through newspapers, Parliament, MORNING, AUGUST Isolation. N Wi //;V/’ e the radio and propaganda bureaus) their public opinion to support certain { international policies. Consequently | Europeans at large think of the United States usually (but not entirely) as their foreign offices and political lead- ers want the people to think. And, in dictator-dominated countries, es- | peclally, the public has to think the | way his government wants him to ‘r NAZI CHIEFS CAPITALIZE | 18, 1935. What Europe Thinks of U.S. Statesmen Abandon Hope That This Country Can Be Dragged Into Their Troubles. Special Ar ticles Travel — Resorts { BY MALCOLM McDOWELL. WEED long regarded as a no- account. worthless vegetable A pariah, one of the most en- thusiastically detested of farm nuisances and held up to scorn as an unmitigated pest, now acclaimed 83 & most remarkable plant, a poten- tial dividend producer a million-dollar weed—this is the Jerusalem artichoke. | The “why” and the “how” of the | recent aggrandizement of this pestif- erous member of the sunflower fam- ily go back to the research laboratories of those wizards who are constantly turning out miracles, the industrial chemists. Jerusalem artichoke grows ! in all parts of this country, on all | sorts of land and with scant regard | to weather conditions, locations and soils. Anvthing goes with this rugged individuali't. The acre yields of these tubers are littlc short of enormous. ‘The industrial chemists, probing the inner secrets of the tubers to find out what they might have in them, discovered they are prolific sources of levulose, the sweetest of sugars, and of industrial alcohol. Now a plant which is easily grown, which practical- | ly Is immune from most plant dis- | eases and which is available as raw material for the manufacture of sugar | and alcohol is a plant worthy of the earnest attention of farmers and in- dustrialists, even though it always has | been classed as a lowdown weed nui- | sance. Million-Dollar Debut. And it got this attention when it made its million-dollar debut before | the conference of representatives of | | agriculture, industry and science held |early in May at Dearborn, Mich, which put the “farm chemurgic” in | the front-page headlines of the coun- try's dailies. After the proponents of the artichoke had listed the potenti- alities of its tubers in the exact phraseology of scientific data. the| opinion was offered by the industrial- | ists and scientists that the million- think—or not at all. To express con- trary views ‘out loud—in Germany, Italy or Russia—would be embarrass- ing for a foreigner and actually dan- gerous for a citizen. The only American who has gotten by with a defense of American tradi- tions in Germany has been Ambassa- dor Dodd. His after-dinner speeches on intolerance, freedom of the press, religious liberty, etc., caused a mild sensation in the press outside of Ger- many. Inside of Naziland, however, his views did not circulate beyond the rooms in which they were aired. In Italy, Americans keep their mouths shut or praise Il Duce. What Fascists | dollar weed might become eligible as | member of the multimillionaire | class. | | It has been found that the artichoke | tubers have a levulose content as high as 24 per cent, and that an acre of artichokes ‘has produced from 300 to 1350 gallons of industrial alcohol. | Furthermore, it was shown that the | bushel yield of the tubers of this amazing plant is 400 to 600 in New England, 200 to 400 on Western soil, | | some of it semi-arid, and that experi- | mental crops have made yields as high as 2,500 to 4,000 bushels to the acre on irrigated lands in Texas and California. These figures convey some idea of the enormous possibili- ties of the Jerusalem artichoke as a source of two of America’s most im- portant products—sugar and alcohol. Improved Variety Developed. Fred G. Johnson of Hastings, Nebr., MILLION-DOLLAR WEED RISES FROM PEST CLASS Jerusalem Artichoke, Once Worthless Vegetable, Now Source of Sugar ¢ ply and Vast Quantities of Alcohol. L operation of a levulose plant on & commercial scale are still to be worked out; a few months and a few thou- sand dollars will guarantee the suc- cess of the enterprise. The result is staggering to the imagination; it means the utter banishment from our tables of all cane and beet sugars and the direct efforts of thousands and thousands of our farmess toward the supply of our entire needs of sugar.” Need for More Alcohol Seen. Dr. Ralph M. Hixon of the depart- ment of chemistry, Jowa State Col- lege, widely known for his many im- portant discoveries in the field of agri- cultural chemistry, made an exhaus- tive study of the Jerusalem artichoke. He expressed the opinion that indus- trial alcohol offers a most encourag- ing outlet for the artichoke. *“I be- lieve,” he said, “that the extensive use of alcohol in moter fuel is bound to take place within the next five years. About 35 gallons of industrial al- cohol can be expected from one ton of artichokes.™ In the meantime, the industrial chemists are probing deeper into the secrets of the artichoke tuber: the chemical engineers are devising the machinery and the sequences of processes to produce levulose and al- cohol commercially from the erstwhile weed. Tung Oil Produced in U. S. Modern, mass-production ways of doing things are rapidly American- izing one of the world's aristocratic industries—the making of tung oil. For more than 50 centuries, the culture of the tung tree and the pressing of the oil from {ts fruit has been a unique art of China. The records of that country show that for more than 5.000 vears tung ofl has been a most important factor in Chinese life. In comparison with this antiquity. the petroleum, automobile, rubber, electrical and transportation indus- tries of the United States appear to be mere upstarts. And now this blue-blooded aristo- crat has sent some of its progeny to America. for tung oil has become an infant industry here. holding high promise that it quickly will develop into a Southern crop producing mil- lions of dollars’ worth of oil each year in commercial groves and small farm orchards. Principal Market Here. According to the Uniled States De- partment of Commerce, more than | nine-tenths of the total quantity of tung oil exported by China comes to this country. For tung oil alone | American manufacturers of paints, :varntshes. lacquers, enamels. lino- leum, oilcloth, electrical equipment, |insulating compounds, automobiles |and hundreds of other products are sending $15,000,000 every year to will go down in American agricultural | China. In addition this country history as a pioneer grower and de- | spends over $60,000,000 annually for veloper of the white, or improved.|linseed and linseed oil imported from Jerusalem artichoke. Speaking of it ' India and other sources. It Is con- | as a raw material available in indus- | fidently asserted that American. try, he said: | grown tung ofl can displace imported “The Jerusalem artichoke is rapidly | linseed oil. becoming a source of sugar: it s0On | The astonishing versatility of teme | will be elevated from its class as weeds | oil in American ON ECONOMIC UNREST and Nazis, and their newspapers say about the United States ernments at the moment. depends | largely upon the temper of their gov- | High Cost of Living and Scarcity of nd, because of the ease of cultiva- tion and the large yield obtainable, it has come to be regarded gs a very remarkable plant and & source of industry and the | high potentiality of the tung tree as | an annual income producer for South- ern farmers were disclosed at the joint | Jater, Danzig was Polish, although it | Adriatic Irredentist ambitions: Rus- i : - ; | agriculture - industry - science confer- But for the people of the Danzig preserved its Teutonic character. Na-|sia was peeved because she could not large quantities of sugar and al- ence held a few weeks ago at Dear- Free State this truce between Warsaw and Berlin was a terrible blow. For nearly a decade and a half “hey had been carrying on a desperate resle.-f ance to Polish penetration. By the treaty of Versailles, while they had | been erected into a free state under the supervision of the League, they | had also been included within the customs frontiers of Poland. The theory had been that Danzig would thereby serve as the port of the new Poland, and prosperity thus insured would lead to the gradual disappear- ance of resistance to the new order. Move for Protection. Unhappily for themselves, however, | the Danzigers guessed wrong in the Russo-Polish war of 1920 and under- took to prevent the delivery to the| Poles of the munitions shipped to| them by the French. Having re-| pulsed the Soviet invasion the Poles | presently were free to deal with the | Danzig question. Realizing that what | the people of Danzig had actually done in 1920 they might attempt again, the Poles resolved to protect themselves and proceeded to construct upon their own territory the port of Gdynia and also, with French money, | to build a railway on Polish soil be- | tween Gdynia and the hinterland. As a consequence, Poland today possesses in Gdynia a magnificent modern port, far better equipped with machinery than Danzig, easier of ac- cess and capable of handling all of the export and faport trade of the republic. As the resistance of Dan- zig has continued, too, the Poles have gradually transferred traffic to Gdynia until today the new port has passed the old, alike in tonnage of ships entering and leaving and in the weight of goods and commodities exported and imported. Danzig has, therefore, become like a city besieged, its sea-borne trade drying up, its economic situation becoming ever more desperate. Ten years longer of this sort of peaceful blockade, therefore, prom- ised the final ruin of Danzig. As a result, the Danzigers themselves set out to destroy the Polish-German truce by acts of sabotage. First of all they threw themselves into the hands of the Nazis and organized a local branch of the Hitler party. At recent elections this new party just failed to get a two-thirds majority and thus capture control of the politi- cal machinery of the Free State, but they did disclose a remarkable gain in numbers. . Sought To Force Hitler. The next move and the move which has produced the present crisis was a declaration of a free trade pro- gram with Germany. German goods were to be admitted without duty to the Free State. But by the treaty of Versailles, Danzig had been included within the tariff walls of Poland. The result of this move was comparable to the situation which would ensue if New York City suddenly opened its doors to foreign goods without re- ) sasd to the American tarift provllio'. poleon restored Danzig independence | obtain recognition and some Germans by the treaty of Tilsit, which also | resented the failure to impose literally created the Grand Duchy of Warsaw, | the 14 points at Versailles. But, in and as late as the Congress of Vienna | general, Americans and the United the Danzigers protested against union | States stood ace high from November, | with Prussia. Thereafter, however, local loyalty gave way to national pa- triotism and Danzig became a willing and enthusiastic portion of the new German empire. The election of the Danzig Free State by the Paris Peace Conference was a concession to the Wilsonian doc- trine of self-determination. The peo- Ple of Danzig were German, but their territory constituted a thin Teutonic facade to the Slavic hinterland and the city was the natural port of the vast region of the Vistula, which con- stituted the larger part of Poland. Racially Danzig was bound to Ger- many, economically it was indissolubly associated with Poland. To give it to Germany was to put Prussian hands at the throat of the new Polish re- public. To give it to Poland was to surrender 350,000 Germans to Polish rule. The compromise ultimately adopted was to give the Germans of Danzig political independence, but to establish their economic unity with Poland. Compromise a Failure. This compromise, however, never worked. It was a half measure which left the Danzigers still eager to be Germans and the Poles still resolved to obtain complete control of the city which was their natural window on the sea. To preserve their German majority the Danzigers closed their | gates to Polish immigrants. To break the Danzig grip upon their throat the Poles built Gdynia. For years and years the battle raged. Every session of the Council or Assembly of the League of Nations was called upon to deal with some fresh Danzig issue. There were murders in the streets of Danzig, endless battles between the Danzig Senate and the Polish govern- ment. Now, after the slight pause produced by the non-aggression pact, the con- flict has broken out again. There is, moreover, no possibility of settling this dispute on any but one of two bases. Either Danzig must return to Ger- many or it must fall to Poland out- right. But Poland will fight rather than agree to the former settlement, and Germany must fight rather than consent to the latter solution. For the first adjustment would prove but the initial step to the suppression of the Corridor, and the second would prove the preliminary to the absorp- tion of East Prussia. During the past 15 years, moreover, Poland has been winning this battle of the Eastern Marches. Since Po- morze, Posen and Upper Silesia were restored to the newly liberated Poland, more than a million Germans have left these former Prussian provinces, and in them barely 400,000 Germans remain against 4,000,000 Slavs. The Polish population in this region is growing by leaps and bounds by reason (Continued on Third Page.) | 1918, until Locarno. During the period that immediately preceded the depression Uncle Sam became everything from “Uncle Santa Claus” to “Uncle Shylock.” The time when American tourists lit cigarettes with 10-franc notes (worth about 20 cents) and American nogveaux-riches showered bewildering tips on taxi drivers and waiters, passed shortly before the depression broke. Diplomats and politicians no longer maneuver and intrigue to get the United States involved in their efforts to escape the inevitable consequences of the war, They now know it isn't any use. Two Sides to the Picture, There have always been two sides to the picture of what Europe thinks of America and Americans. One is what governments—or politicians, diplomats and occasional statesmen which make up governments—think, and try to make their peoples think. The other is what the man-in-the- street, the tradesmen, innkeepers, peasants and workers, think and feel toward Americans and the United States. The views of the former are pred- icated largely upon political, financial and economic factors. Those of the masses are based upon social, racial, religious, historical and traditional reactions and viewpoints. They are also influenced to some extent by such questions as tariffs, exports, ex- changes, tourist traffic, emigration possibilities, etc., which in turn re- flect the internal policies of the United States. Santa Claus Idea Passes. ‘Whatever the drawbacks to the American policy of “Splendid Isola- tion” in the conduct of our interna- tional affairs may be—and they ad- mittedly are many—the policy of minding our own business, swhich now appears to be in vogue, has had one important effect upon European na- tions. They are slowly coming around to the realization that “there isn’t any Santa Claus” anymore so far as Uncle Sam is concerned. It has taken European politicians a full decade—and a depression—to con- vince themselves® that the American people, as a whole, are not interna- tionally minded; that at the present time at least, Americans aren’t inter- ested in saving the world for democ- racy, and that, if they have their way, there will be no one-sided cancellation of the war debts. Although they had one proof of it when the United States turned the Woodrow Wilsonites out of office, European statesmen cannot rec- oncile themselves to the fact that, in the final analysis, the American Gov- ernment usually follows the wishes of the people rather thah succeeds in moulding public opinion gw con- | ] at Low BY JOHN ELLIOTT. | ERLIN.—Behind the anti-Jew-| ish drive stands a popular dis- | B content with the economic| situation in the Third Reich.| ‘It probably would be inaccurate to| | say that the authorities are fostering | a racial hatred in order to divert pub- lic attention from the economic reali- ties, but it is certainly true that the | radical leaders like Julius Streicher are capitalizing this popular unrest for their own ends. The most salient feature in the day- | | to-day life in Germany at present is | the soaring cost of living and the| scarcity of foodstuffs. Meats are be-| coming more costly and scarcer. | Lemons have almost disappeared from | the market and sausage-makers can- not obtain sufficlent supplies of pork | to satisfy the demands of their cus- tomers. At one time this Spring, onions, accompaniment of the potato food which feeds the households of the poor, were unobtainable in Berlin. The Nazis have reduced the volume of registered unemployed to 1,754,000, compared with the total of 2,496,000 a year ago. But this reduction in unemployment has been possible to a great extent by the spreading of employment at the expense of those who already had jobs. Wages and salaries are practically stationary at the low level of 1932. Nazi leaders openly admit that wages cannot be increased until unemployment has been conquered and Hjalmar Schacht, president of the Reichsbank, has pub- lically warned the German people not to expect improvement in the standard of living in Germany for the next decade. ‘Wages Are Low. Fifty per cent of the German work- ers earn less than 30 reichsmarks a week, and great holes are made in this scanty wage by social contribu- tions which are both compulsory and “voluntary.” But food prices have increased in these two years of Hit- ler's rule by 25 per cent, while’ official statistics show that agricultural prod- ucts have gone up in this period from €1 to 100 per cent. The German workers are angry be- cause they are being made to pay for the economic benefits bestowed on farmers by increased German tariffs on foodstuffs, which have made the price gain in the Reich two to three times higher than that of the world prices. Workers also charge that Schacht, who is also acting minister of economics, by rigidly limiting im- ports into the Reich is giving prefer- ence to food for the people. Indeed, the tremendous cost of the huge military program of rearmament upon which the Hitler government is now involved is proving & heavy strain for an impoverished country like Ger- ‘many. Although by law s are now " Food Inflict Hardships—Wages “Uncle Shylock” Inspired. ) ‘The sporadic outbursts of enthusi-| Level. Europe ever since Wilson presented |asm for, or resentment against, the | | United States which have appeared in | | average of 22 shifts and miners who .|ple are sent to concentration camps l(orhit‘.lden in the Reich, illegal strikes Lroke out in the Spring in several in- dustrial plants, where the men pro- tested against a 50-pfenning impost for Gen. Goering's “air defense.” in | connection with an air week, cor.ing | on top of their already high contribu- | tions. Nazi authorities ended the | strike by complying with the demands | of the workers and tried to hush up the existence of these industrial troubles by prohibiting the German | press from publishing anything about | them. & Unrest in Mines. | Unrest has been particularly acute in Westphalia, where some of the mines have so few shifts that the| men'’s wages have amounted to a little | more than a dole. Hitler is now try- ing to allay this unrest by devising a | “holiday shift adjustment,” whereby every German must work a monthly have suffered the most through en- forced holidays are to be granted out- door relief from the Nazi party charity. Carl Goerdeler, the Reich commis- | sioner who has functioned in a simi- lar capacity to Dr. Heinrich Brue- ing, former chancellor, has tried his| best to keep prices down, but has been powerless against the operations of economic laws which persist in run- ning on despite the attempts by the Nazis to legislate them out of exist- ence. Housekeepers are grumbling at | the high cost of living, even though it is exceedingly dangerous these days to talk too loudly in pubiic about the rising prices or even express an indi- rect criticism against the Nazi gov- ernment. Arrests are made and peo- for the smallest reasons. A classic instance of this was the arrest last week of Frau Pommer of Esson, wife of a respectable citizen and Steel Helmet man. She went to s shop to buy some chocolate and when she found that she could not get her favorite brand, announced her intention of going to a competing store across the street. “Don’t do that,” warned the shop-| keeper. “That is a purely Jewish store.” “Well, even if one does not live with Jews, why should one not buy from them?" retorted Frau Pommer. She was put under “protective al rest” for inciting against the Nazi state and “world philosophy.” A fundamental difficulty in Ger- many's economic situation is a short- age of foreign exchange. Detailed figures for the first half of 1935 offi- clally put out here this week show that Schacht’s “new plan” for re- stricting imports and stimulating ex- ports is working badly. While imports have contracted, so have exports, and the surplus of imports for the half year still total 165,000,000 reichsmarks.. (Copyright, 1935.) the Old World with the covenant of the League of Nations, or rather shoved the League idea down France’s, Great Britain's and Italy’s throat by putting it into the Versailles treaty, have been by-products of govern- ‘mental policies more than the sincere viewpoints of the peoples in various continental countries. For example, | the “Uncle Shylock” campaign which swept Great Britain and France when sentiment for repudiation of war debts was. being brewed was officially inspired. No amount of assurances from Ramsay MacDonald, Stanley Baldwin or other British government leaders to the contrary can convince impartial observers that the North- cliffe press acted upon its own initia: tive. Nor will Frenchmen such as ex-Premier Edouard Herriot soon for- get British maneuverings to create an anti-debt payment sentiment which jockeyed France into the unpleasant and embarrassing position of being the first nation to officially default, while Great Britain continued to make the face-saving “token payments.” Nor has London’s secret and abrupt departure from the gold standard been forgiven by European countries | who were caught for heavy financial losses. France’s, Holland’s and Switzerland's resentment—and to a certain extent England's—over Wash- ington’s dollar devaluation was tem- pered by the fact that Americans were playing their own game. Track Abandoned. After the London Economic Confer- ence an effort was made to convince the European people that Washington alone was responsible for the chaotic exchange ~ situation and prevented stabilization and the consequent re- habilitation of export and import trade. That track has now been abandoned, generally speaking, and the French government, at least, no longer can pass the blame for the deepening depression to the Ameri- cans. The Prench people are more in- clined to demand that their govern- ment follow in the footsteps of the New Deal than to accept political criticism of American experiments. The threat of Bolshevism is no longer a bugaboo to hold over Frenchmen since the Franco-Russian “military alliance against Germany was nego- tiated. Yet the trend of Washington's fight against the economic crisis is featured as a world menace in many European newspapers. Editors who have dared to defend American poli- cies, and who have been persistent in demanding that -the French govern- ment devaluate the franc, have found themselves in difficulty. The office of the Petit Journal of Paris, edited by Albert Lejeune, was raided for evi- dence of speculation in exchange, but the publishers were completely vin- dicated and their “sympathy” toward the United lfll‘m found to be cohol.” Dr. William J. Hale, one of the most famous American chemists, has made some rather startling assertions concerning the million-dollar weed. | “Aside from utilization in the form | of new foods” he said, “the tuber | will supply levulose, the sugar 50 per cent sweeter than sucrose, or ordi-| nary sugar, and far better for the | human system. The engineering prob- lems necessary to insure successful sincere, even though it was embarass- ing for the Doumergue and Flandin ministries. While “blood may be thicker than | water” and English-speaking peoples | may instinctively stick together, the British foreign office never has hesi- tated to make use of the good offices and influence of Washington to pull England’s political and commercial chestnuts out of the fire. Downing Street’s maneuvers in blocking Japan’s | “Twenty-One Demands” on China and her subsequent policy at Geneva during the more recent Manchurian affair, to say nothing of the Wash- ington Naval Conference and the de- nunciation of the Anglo-Japanese alliance which preceded it, are ex- amples of the traditional British for- eign office tactics. Washington Led Way. In checkmating Japan's demands upon China two decades ago it was Washington which first lodged a formal and emphatic protest against Tokio's encroachment threat. But it was the British foreign office which indorsed the American demarche and | which sotto-voce gave Japan, an ally, friendly and urgent advice to yield. At that time Great Britain could advise Japan, but she could not very well challenge the good faith of & much-needed ally. Then again at the Washington Naval Conference the British foreign office played both ends against the middle, letting the United States bear the onus of thwarting Japan's naval armaments ambitions, and the initiative for farthering the ill-fated nine-power treaty guaranteeing the political sovereignty and territorial integrity of China. The same tactics were repeated at the Geneva and London Conferences for Limitation of Naval Armaments, but without suc- cess. When America refused to lead in disarmament most European coun- tries lost all interest in the movement. Today some -apitals try to make be- lieve that Washington has let the world down on disarmament, but their peoples know differently. In the Manchurian affair at Geneva 8ir John Simon at first ap- parently championed Japan's cause, but actually he looked to Secretary of State Stimson to render that born, Mich,, now functioning as the Farm Chemurgic Council, which seeks to hitch the factory to the farm, to | their mutual profit. Tung oil, as an agircultural producer of raw material usable in industry, is on the council's list with the soy bean, Jerusalem artichoke, slash pine, hemp, flax and other farm products available or to be made available for manufacturing purposes. Brought to U. S. in 1904, Back in 1904 the United States De- partment of Agriculture brought in some tung seed from China and dis- tributed it for planting and experi- mentation along a selected climatic belt from Florida to California. The Government experiment station at Gainsville, Fla, took such active in. terest in the project that North-Cen- tral Florida is regarded as the tung oil center of the country. Here, un- der modern horticulture and mass- production methods, the tung tree is commercially cultivated. Modern oil extraction machinery is used and the nearly white, pure Florida tung oil is said to be vastly superior to the Chinese oil and also superior to lin- seed oil for most purposes. How a Grower Sees It. B. P. Williamson and Harry W. Bennett of Gainsville, have been ! pioneers in developing the new tung ofl industry. Talking about tung trees and oil, Mr. Williamson said: “Over $500,000,000 has gone out of the country in the last 10 years for inferior paint and varnish oils when we can produce superior products in their place at a profit. This produc- tion in the United States would sup- port 30 to 40 thousand people. Dur- ing the four or five years necessary to bring the trees into production, cattle, sheep and chickens run in the groves, producing meay and milk. Adjacent to the groves and on the same type of soil grow pine trees that produce turpentine. We are suc- cessfully manufacturing tung oil into paints and varnishes, using the tur- pentine grown next door to the grove, 30,000 Acres of Trees. “We have in this country a little over 30,000 acres of tung trees. The United States uses 80 to 00 per cent of the world’s production of tung oil. If they put tung oil into paint and make the quality that should be made, it would only take three or four of the big concerns to consume all the tung oil in sight. “So here is a crop that is not over- produced—it cannot be over-produced in many, many years. We have de- veloped sufficient evidence to show it can be produced in the United States and at a profit. We are really just getting in production for this year. We will handle about five tank cars, with about 8 or 10 thousand championship ineffective. ‘When ‘Washington finally pulled its punches in dealing with the Far Eastern ques- tion there was nothing for Sir John ~ (Confinued _r Ninth Page) gallons to the car. That shows defi- nite commercial production. "he ‘major problems are solved ancd we are ready to go ahead.” (Copyright 1035. by the North T ewsbaper Allance. Tng. ericaR