Now-editorial Notes

Naziland is boycotting the United States. In return for Woodrow Wilson’s overthrow of Kaiserism and the Hohenzollern dynasty, for Herbert Hoover’s feeding of the starving German people after the war and the granting of the moratorium to save Germany from either Nazism or Communism, for the American people’s sympathy and aid to Germany since the end of the World War, Hitlerite Germany has now given notice to the American Government of its intention to terminate in 1935 the existing commercial treaty containing the most-favored-nation clause.

The Nazi government is discriminating against the United States in the matter of payment of interest to American holders of German bonds issued under the Dawes plan. While Germany is paying in full in foreign exchange the bondholders in Great Britain, France, Switzerland, Holland, Belgium, Sweden and Italy, German bondholders in this country are to receive only fifty per cent in cash and the balance in depreciated reichsmarks.

The Hitler regime is deliberately excluding Germany from normal and friendly relations with other nations, isolating her and alienating the sympathy of other nations, by violations of international good will, by failure to fulfil her obligations, by discriminations, by tricky subterfuge and arrogant irritation.

The German aide-memoire left with the Department of State by Ambassador Luther, giving notice of intention to terminate the commercial treaty next year, adds:

“As has already been repeatedly stated to the Government of the United States, Germany is ready at any time to engage in negotiations concerning the future shaping of German-American commercial relations.”

In view of the fact that the Department of State had on a previous occasion pointed out to Germany that Germany’s own political policies were responsible for the curtailment of her exports, and in the face of the latest discriminations against Americans who invested unwisely in German securities, the American Government could hardly engage in negotiations for a new commercial treaty that would prove satisfactory to the Nazi government. The Hitler and Schacht alibis and excuses, the Nazi attempts to make the world believe that Germany’s economic distress is due solely to the “Jewish” anti-German boycott abroad, can only delude the poor German people who, under the Hitlerite despotism, are not permitted to know the truth of what is happening in and to Germany.

The nations that are not being discriminated against by the Nazis are those whose governments did not permit such discriminations. England, France, Italy, and Switzerland notified the Hitler government in unmistakable terms that they would not tolerate the repudiation of its obligations to their nationals. Hitler is discriminating against the United States because the American people had made possible the democratization of militaristic Germany, because the American people had given food and sympathy to the starving Germans immediately after the war, and had poured billions of dollars into Germany, which the Germans have used to pay some of their debts to other nations and to manufacture munitions for a new war.

The Nazi termination of the commercial treaty between the United States and Germany is not an expression of the ingratitude of the German people, but a further demonstration of the unscrupulous methods of the Nazi bullies now in the saddle in Germany.