'Ware Marks!

On the money markets of six continents plugs of pessimism were pulled last week and black warnings gushed out that any day now the "free" reichsmark, to which Germany has grafted numerous other types of "blocked" marks, will be forced off Reichsbank President Schacht's highly theoretical gold standard.

What pulled the plugs was a sudden dip of nearly 6% in a single day last week of Dr. Schacht's very best reichsmarks. The other kinds of marks, including the effektensperrmark, kreditsperrmark, and register mark, which Germany has created by amazingly complex categories of exchange restriction also bobbed up and down sharply. And the gold reserve of the Reichsbank was down to an ominous 3.4%.

Because Dr. Schacht is the slickest central banker in Europe enemies charged him with having gold up his sleeve. Irate President Max Winkler of the American Council of Foreign Bondholders Inc. sniffed vague quantities of gold in various German State banks and insisted that Dr. Schacht was up to his old tricks of staving off Germany's creditors with adroit panic statistics. But the deep, general impression that the mark is drifting swiftly toward inflation would not down.

Surest proof that Germans themselves have turned panicky and are hastening inflation by trying to get ready for it appeared last week when the Nazi Press finally disclosed that Germans lately have been frantically buying up and hoarding all sorts of goods from shoes to bicycle tires, overcoats and copper wire.

Nazi decrees were clapped on last week to stop the sale of bicycle tires by wholesalers to retailers. The purchase of extra suits of clothes was placed under official suspicion and Nazi stormtroopers throughout Germany were ordered to buy no more uniforms of any sort without permission from the Mother Brown House in Munich. Scoffing at "single track minds who buy winter overcoats in June." Der Volkischer Beobachter, Chancellor Hitler's own news-organ, lashed overcoat hoarders as "human squirrels who do not realize how dumb they are."

German factory owners were visited by Nazi squads who demanded, "Tell us the names of salesmen who have been urging you to stock up on raw materials so they can be punished."

By a series of drastic measures the Hitler Government has set up virtual war-time control of exports and imports. Rumors flew that a crop shortage threatened Germany and the Government reacted by forbidding newsorgans to report any crop returns as worse than "medium." Remembering the ghastly food substitutes they had to eat during their last inflation, Germans read eagerly a defiant editorial on "Rawstuffs Spectre" in Der Volkischer Beobachter. Without getting down to essentials this Hitler editorial clarioned, "Germany always has acquired and always can get rawstuffs!"

Since British credits to Germany are extremely large, the prospect of mark inflation weakened confidence in sterling last week and quickened a nervous flight of capital to France.-- Since gold has been pouring in at a rate of more than 100,000,000 francs per day and the cover on French banknotes climbed to near 79%, many a shrewd Frenchman felt that the security of the franc on gold was now beyond dispute.

--Savage riots by Communists and Socialists in halt a dozen French cities over the week-end failed to shake faith in Premier Gaston. Doumergue who called in Leftists and threatened to dissolve the Chamber if they did not use their influence to check pinko-Red violence.

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