Profitable Export

Germany's most profitable export in 1940 was the New Order. In London last week solemn, 38-year-old Richard Austen Butler, Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, told Britain's House of Commons what it cost five European nations annually to feed and house Adolf Hitler's armies of occupation. The figures came from published reports of the German Government, except in the case of The Netherlands, where, said Britain's Butler, they must be treated with reserve. The bill:

France $3,886,900,000 Belgium 352,500,000 Norway 319,600,000 The Netherlands 253,800,000 Denmark 122,200,000

Total $4,935,000,000

In the years of peace that followed World War I, Germany complained long and bitterly over the "intolerable burden" of reparation payments to the Allies. The original debt of $32,000,000,000, payable in annual installments of $500,000,000 each, plus a tax on her exports, was scaled down by the Young Committee in 1929 to $26,350,000,000, the yearly payments decreased. In 1932, when Germany ceased to pay, the Allies had collected some $9,000,000,000--a little less than twice as much as the territories occupied by Nazis (excluding Poland, Czecho-Slovakia, Rumania, Bulgaria) now, according to this reckoning, pay each year for the privilege of having German troops police them.

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