GERMANS BLAMED

Evening Post, Volume CXXVI, Issue 153, 2 December 1938, Page 11

GERMANS BLAMED

UNECONOMIC TRADING

DESTROYING WORLD COMMERCE

HER PEOPLE TO PAY

(British OffidaJ Wireless.)

RUGBY, November 30

An important reference to the conditions of economic competition in Europe was made by the Secretary of the Department of Overseas Trade, Mr. R. S. Hudson, in a speech at the end of the debate in the House of Commons on a private member's motion on the development of the export trade. *

Dealing with the question of why Britain did not follow the example of the United States of America in refusing most-favoured-nation treatment to German goods, Mr. Hudson said that there was no discrimination against British goods in Germany as was the case with certain United States goods.

The British complaint against Germany was merely that by her methods she was destroying trade throughout the world. According to information he possessed in his Department, it appeared that in the countries of central and south-eastern Europe Germany was trading on a basis of paying to producers in those countries much more than the world paid. If she was going to do that, it was" obviously at the expanse of the German people. Germany was obtaining an economic stranglehold on some' of these countries by raising the cost of living to her own people and by exporting goods at less than cost price.

In order to meet this competition, j said Mr. Hudson, the only.method was to organise British industries so that they might be able to speak as units with the industries of Germany. Britain was stronger financially than many other countries and certainly stronger than any of the1 totalitarian States, and thus had an advantage which would result in her winning the fight. His Department was doing its best to see that more and more industries were organised on this basis.