Full Throttle

Convalescent from an attack of his family's chronic ailment, gout, British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain appeared last week in the House of Commons for the first time in a fortnight. One of the first questions asked him was by Labor Leader Major Clement Richard Attlee: What steps did the Government propose to take to combat Germany's ruthless new Minenkrieg (mine warfare)? Mr. Chamberlain's reply startled the House and jarred the sensibilities of several nations. The Government, he said, would shortly authorize the Royal Navy to seize not only contraband goods suspected of going into Germany, but all "exports of German origin or ownership." Germany, lying on her economic back half-throttled, had started kicking below the belt. "As a measure of justified reprisal" for "this fresh outrage," Germany should be throttled entirely. She should be cut off from her export markets, from which she derives foreign exchange to buy war sinews.

Before the war began, 70% of Germany's export trade was with European countries, mostly The Netherlands, France and England. Japan, South America, Mexico and the Indies are Germany's biggest remaining export markets (outside of bartering with Russia). For example, Chile is waiting now for a big order of German railway equipment.

In the first ten months of 1939, Germany cleared more than 10,000,000 tons of exports through Dutch ports alone. These outlets would be easy for the Allies to shut, and just as easy would be the two ends of the Mediterranean.

Raging at Mr. Chamberlain's announcement, the German Government charged that Simon Bolivar's sinking was a British job horridly staged as excuse for an export embargo. At the same time, Minenkrieg more deadly than ever was pressed home in British waters, over the sea as well as under it. German agents in Belgium and The Netherlands let those two neutrals know that they had better protest at the top of their lungs against this new invasion of their rights. This both countries did and in The Netherlands' case the protest conveyed as much real as dictated anguish, for one Hollander in three derives his livelihood from German trade. Minister Jonkheer Edgar Michiels van Verduyen, for the Dutch, was soon followed to the British Foreign Office by Minister Baron Emile Ernest de Cartier de Marchienne for the Belgians. Denmark protested, Sweden protested, Norway protested--but all of them less vigorously than the two Nazi-prodded neutrals, and Sweden simultaneously complained to Germany about some sea mines laid within her three-mile limit. Italy protested too, but with a mildness explained by the fact that if Germany's exports (many of which go through Genoa and Trieste) are clamped down on, Italy may inherit Germany's foreign customers.

Loudest protest of all was fired off in London by Mamoru Shigemitsu, Japan's Ambassador. He was instructed to say that "in case vital interests of Japan should be affected . . . Japan would be compelled to take appropriate counter-measures." This was tough talk from a country whose fondness for Germany is supposed to have been cooled by the Hitler-Stalin Deal. But Japan, threatened by an embargo of U. S. exports to her at the next session of the U. S. Congress, faced a tough spot.

Deepest effect of Britain's blockade of German exports--formal proclamation of which was delayed until the neutrals had sounded off--will be much like the trade-hampering effect of the U. S. cash-&-carry law, but working in reverse. Customers will certainly not take title to goods ordered from Germany until the goods are landed safely on the buyer's doorstep. And customers will be reluctant to order German goods, knowing them to be subject to delay or confiscation on their way overseas.

London reports said that the new blockade would be handled by the Allies at the same control ports and with the same machinery used to enforce the blockade of war materials bound for Germany. This machinery was greased last week by offering to neutral shippers commercial passports, called "navicerts," to show that their cargoes have been inspected in their own countries and found non-contraband. Navicerts will be signed by or for His Majesty's Ambassador in the shipper's country and will facilitate (but not guarantee) passage of the shipment through control ports. With what was intended as exquisite British tact, the British Ambassador to the U. S., Lord Lothian, observed that navicerts were "due to the perspicacity" of Robert P. Skinner, U. S. Consul General at London during World War I, and were found most useful on that occasion. Price: $2.

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