THE TIMES: DUTCH HELP FOR GERMANY: 30 December 1936

DUTCH HELP FOR GERMANY

SURPLUS FARM PRODUCE

SIR HENRI DETERDING'S SCHEME

FROM OUR OWN CORRESPONDENT

THE HAGUE, DEC. 29

Sir Henri Deterding has drawn up a scheme by which the entire surplus of Dutch agricultural products is to be bought and transported to Germany. There it will be sold in marks and the revenue will be handed over to the German Winter Help organization. Under the motto, " Western cooperation," Sir Henri Deterding has appealed for Dutch support, and in particular for more financial help.

A large quantity of food, including millions of tons of bacon and 30,000 pigs, has already been bought. The dispatch of the Dutch surplus supplies will be with the approval of the Dutch Government and will not affect the quotas already fixed. It is believed that Sir Henri Deterding's first donation is over £1,000,000. In connection with the scheme an institute was recently founded at Haarlem under the name De Waag and it will be responsible for the publication of a new periodical edited by Dr. D. M. Dyt, who is the administrator of Sir Henri Deterding's large estates in Mecklenburg. Sir Henri is now residing in Berlin near the Little Wannsee.

In a letter announcing his decision, Sir Henri Deterding explains that his motives are based on the conclusion that Bolshevism can only result in larger unemployment and misery. The main object of the Communists, he says, is to permit as little cooperation between the nations as possible, because only then will their destructive principles succeed. They therefore started to create trouble in Spain six years ago, and the result is now daily visible. Great Britain deserves to be thanked for her policy of non-intervention which has prevented greater trouble among the other Powers in Europe. The further cooperation of these Powers will be the quickest remedy against infectious Communism.

Germany is a natural market for the agricultural products of Holland, while Germany can dispose of part of her industrial production in Holland. The clearing system, with its payment of old debts, has resulted in a dislocation of the balance of payments. Sir 'Henri Deterding then goes into a technical discussion about economic conditions in Holland, and comes to the conclusion that the only solution is to allocate the surplus of her agrarian products to the country where they are wanted and where there is a ready market for them. As soon as this surplus has been disposed of, he says, the restrictions on trade can safely be cancelled. After another attack on Bolshevism, he says that the present gold policy is another cause of the apparent impossibilty of sending the surplus of one rich country to another country in need of it, and he urges that not gold but the products of labour must serve as a means of exchange.