German Trade Parley

Representatives of France and Germany met at the Quai d'Orsay (French Foreign Office) to negotiate a trade treaty.

These negotiations are made necessary by the termination, next January, of the trade relations between the two countries as expressed in the Treaty of Versailles. Their importance may be considerable. On both sides are men who avowedly sponsor a great steel trust. In France's Lorraine are found Europe's greatest iron deposits; in Germany's Ruhr Valley are the greatest deposits of coal. An agreement to abolish the duties upon iron ore entering Germany and upon coal entering France would have but one effect: France and Germany would be able to undersell their foreign steel competitors.