HAVE WE BEATEN GERMANY?

Press, Volume LVII, Issue 17117, 12 April 1921, Page 7

HAVE WE BEATEN GERMANY?

to ths editor or "rat prMs." Sir, —Your article headed "German Competition," in to-day's issue, makes the answer to the above query at least debatable. Germany has sold to a British firm 14,000 bikes at forty shillings each, landed in London. Now the English shilling is normally somewhere about equal in value to the German mark. But owing to the depreciated exchange, what in Germauyis worth a mark, is only in Great Britain worth three-halfpence. Hence were Germany to send over to England forty marks, she would onlygefc back five shillings. If, however, instead of marks she sends over bikes, she gets back her forty marks in full, and the British manufacturer gefs a bargain. Hence the British manufacturer, as a prudent man, closes down his factory, turns his workmen into the street, and starts the more profitable business of importer. Of course, to expect the bike consumer to pay £5 or moro for the mere pleasure of possessing a British-made machine, when he can get an equally good German one for forty shillings, is to put a rather too severe tax upon his patriotism. And yet, the result is certainly disastrous to British labour. It almost indicates, indeed, that the cost of Germany's indemnity is really the starvation of British labour.—Yours, etc., LABOUR.