(5 of 5)
Gloomy Schacht, U. S. readers learned last week that fears for the capitalist system were not merely scareheads but shared by some of Europe's ablest financiers. Hjalmar Schacht, stubborn president of the Reichsbank through the Young Plan negotiations, had published in the U. S. last week a book on the Reparations problem.* Excerpts:
"The War released veritable orgies of naked lust for material conquest. . . . To squeeze more and more billions out of an impoverished people which has already been robbed of the economic basis of its existence is not only idiotically destructive of economic life but it conjures up more serious social dangers. . . .
"World trade has been receding ever since the Young conference. Some 15,000,000 of unemployed are being supported by their fellowmen, feeding on the financial and economic reserves of the industrial countries. . . . Never was the incapacity of the economic leaders of the capitalist world so glaringly demonstrated as today. ... A capitalism which cannot feed the workers of the world has no right to exist. The guilt of the capitalist system lies in its alliance with the violent policies of imperialism and militarism. . . . The ruling classes of the world today have as completely failed in political leadership as in economic."
When suave, bearded Montagu Norman arrived in Paris last week, newshawks discovered that only a few months ago he had written in a private letter to Governor Moret of the Bank of France:
"Unless drastic measures are taken to save it, the capitalist system throughout the civilized world will be wrecked within a year. I should like this prediction to be filed for future reference."
*Deutsche Bank und Disconto-Gesellschaft, Darmstadter und Nationalbank, Dresdncr Bank.
*THE END OF REPARATIONS—Hjalmar Schacht —Cape & Smith ($3).