Even if the nations boycotting Hitler Germany lose financially it is their moral duty to take this loss in the interests of humanity, Oswald Garrison Villard declares in an article in this week’s Nation, out today.
Villard quotes German Economics Minister Schacht as saying, “If German goods are being barred or boycotted, the foreign bondholders and the foreign exporter are the losers.”
“This is partially sound,” the article states, “because it is perfectly true that we cannot sell American goods to Germany unless we are willing to take German goods from her. But Germany does suffer; Schachat knows it. I have never failed to admit that the boycott is a two-edged sword, and that, if carried far enough, it may create a dangerous situation which might even conceivably lead to hostilities.
TEMPORARILY INSANE
“None the less, the fact is that the boycott of Germany has grown out of a world-wide belief that Germany has gone temporarily insane, and that some measure must be taken to let her people know that the moral indignation of the world is deeply aroused and is finding a way of making itself felt commercially.
“If this costs the United States, England and other countries millions of dollars, I cannot see that this is necessarily a decisive factor. On the contrary, it seems rather creditable that nations and individuals are willing to undergo a loss rather than do business with those who have reduced Germany to its present low estate. If large numbers of our business men are unwilling to handle German goods, does it not show that we have some idealism and moral indignation left and that we are beginning to forge a new weapon in the commercial boycott? This goes far deeper than the question of whether we are cutting off our nose to spite our face in imposing the German boycott. I am sorry for the loss of business, especially during this depression, but the policy of international protest seems to me far more important.
“MENACE TO PEACE”
“As long as the Hitler government remains, it is a menace to the peace and welfare of the world, to democratic institutions, to liberty and humanity everywhere. Why have we not the right, there-fore, to utilize any peaceful weapon we may have to bring about its downfall?”
Writing in the same issue of the Nation, Robert Dell says that “there is no reason to believe that Hitler’s position has been weakened by the result of the August plebiscite, unpleasant as it undoubtedly was to him.
“The winter is likely to be a hard one for Germany and the food conditions may be near famine, but the Germans will not revolt. They will submit to semi-starvation as tamely as they did during the war.
“Hitler is really, not merely nominally, the complete master of Germany and is still the demi-god of the great majority of the German people.”
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
