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Against Trade Pact with Nazis, Untermyer Says in Message

October 1, 1934
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converted into a ration of five dollars to one dollar, it would be interesting to have explained,” he wrote Mr. Hull. “I am sure you appreciate also that a customer is one who pays for what he buys, and that the type of customer who buys only with funds borrowed from the seller which he subsequently refuses to repay is not valuable to the country from which he buys.

CITES PAST EXPERIENCE

“The uniform result of our past experiences in commercial and financial transactions with Germany ever since the War, has been disastrous to us. When Germany has not defaulted upon its solemn obligations, or repudiated them, we have been paid either in ‘stage-money’ or depreciated currency.

Mr. Untermyer criticized severely the State Department chief and warned him that “all the agreements that you may choose to make that would strike down all protective tariffs would not overcome the righteous, country-wide ‘trade-resistance’ against German goods.”

Mr. Hull’s views on the anti-Nazi boycott, Mr. Untermyer declared, sound “very much like qualified approval of the Hitler-Schacht policy that has thus far resulted in the repudiation by Germany of more than a billion dollars worth of bonds owned by American investors; has deprived the latter of some $70,000,000 annually due them as interest on their holdings and has caused a decline in the market value of American-owned German bonds of almost one-third of a billion dollars.”

CONTRADICTS SCHACHT

The Schacht contention that the boycott has caused Germany’s inability to meet payments on her debts, is described as “baseless and fantastic.”

The Secretary of State also comes in for criticism for its procedure in defending American interests, “While European creditors have been protected by the energetic action of their governments, Untermyer wrote Secretary Hull, “our government has confined its activities on behalf of the American public holding defaulted German bonds to the des-patching of eloquent notes which the Hitler-Schacht combine has uniformly dealt with in a manner reminiscent of the treatment which Bethman-Hollweg accorded the treaty guaranteeing Belgium’s neutrality some two decades ago.”

Concluding his protest, Mr. Untermyer questioned the wisdom of making another agreement with “a country that holds the record for broken and repudiated agreements” and urged consideration of Nazi propaganda here as revealed by the McCormack Committee.

“I respectfully insist that, judged by past experiences of our dealings with Germany, which have cost us literally billions of dollars, the less goods we sell that country and the less business we do with it, the better off we will be,” he declared.

PLAN FIRST FALL DANCE

The opening Fall dance of Young Israel of Boro Park will be held next Saturday night at the organizations building, 1363 Fiftieth street, Brooklyn, it was announced yesterday by Murray Novach.

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