Who's Dangerous Now?

Those U.S. businessmen who are still isolationists breathed easier this week. Germany's attack on the U.S.S.R. seemed like a last-minute excuse not to take a cold plunge: a snake was plainly visible in the water. Chortled Isolationist John T. Flynn: "This is where we came in. ... Are we going to fight to make Europe safe for Communism?"

But the menace to U.S. business remained just what it was before.

Early this month, Bernard Mannes Baruch gave the Wall Street Journal an interview which was a great comfort to U.S. appeasers (of whom Baruch is not one). If Hitler wins Europe, said he, then Hitler, not the U.S., will be "on the spot" economically. "Where can she sell her products?" Not in the U.S., old Europe's No. 1 market; and the U.S. could also keep Hitler out of any desired neutral market simply by keeping its own prices down.

Last week Mr. Baruch's sanguine views were answered by a man who had spent 15 years in German-U.S. commercial negotiations. He is Douglas Miller, until 1939 U.S. Commercial Attache in Berlin, now assistant professor of economics at the University of Denver's School of Commerce. In a brief, brilliant, conversational book called You Can't Do Business With Hitler (Little, Brown; $1.50) he describes just what it means to try to trade or compete for trade with businessmen under Nazi control. Items:

> In foreign trade, the Nazis developed a "system of living on their debts." South Africa sent Germany its wool clip for three years before realizing the locomotives, etc. promised in payment were never going to arrive.

> Since Germany did not pay for its imports, it could resell them at any price it chose. U.S. buyers used to get Brazilian coffee, Bulgarian tobacco, Greek currants cheaper in Berlin than in the countries of origin.

> German exports have an average Government subsidy of 40%, paid by such things as a levy on domestic trade associations.

> U.S. prewar barter deals with Germany were all small, bothersome, profitless. On an oil deal, the U.S. exporters got 8,000,000 mouth organs; for an auto body press, 200,000 canaries; for a movie, one live hippopotamus.

> Determined on essential European self-sufficiency, the Nazis, if victorious, will never barter for U.S. surpluses on an equal basis. They do not want foreign trade--except as a political weapon. "We must get this straight once and for all: there is no such thing as having purely economic relations with the totalitarian states."

> From South America, if he wins, Hitler "will offer to buy everything in sight." To pay for it, Germany will export her own surplus, which Latin Americans will welcome: arms. (The Greeks and Yugoslavs got most of their arms from Germany. )

> "The Nazis are not organized for peace. . . . They would not know what to do with it." A totalitarian state at peace "will blow up from internal pressure." Hence Hitler dare never demobilize his armies or his war economy.

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