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Show Daniels Blocks Nazis ONE has to hold his face straight when reading the latest nrw from the barter front of the foreign trrde wars. There are not anv too many facts available, but our smbamwdor 'o Mexico, former Secretary of the Navy Josephus Daniels, seems to be getting the credit for blocking a neat deal between Germany and Mexico. Some time go a New York oil broker waa reported to have arranged a salt of oil Mexico haa had on hand tinea tha expropriations of nearly a year ago, 117,000,000 representing tha value of the oil to be old to Germany. Being low in funds, Mexico would be paid In German oil and machinery. Then later another swap of oil for German air-planet air-planet wat worked out At this point Daniels enters the picture, credited cred-ited with a conference with the neighbor republic's repub-lic's new secretary of war, Jose Agustin Castro. Friday it waa announced that Mexico had rejected re-jected the German offer of 17 airplanes which might easily be converted into war craft. No one would disclose any particulars. But on general principles this government disapproves of barter. It received much attention atten-tion at the Pan-American conference at Lima. It It a stumbling block in the business of developing develop-ing brisk trade among the three Americas. The reason Americana will have to make an , effort to hide their feelingt aa they read the newt from Mexico Is that they will remember having read about a barter deal with Germany as party at the first part and a group of farm cooperative and meat packers In the country aa party of tha second part. German farm machinery, poultry netting and barbed wire would be traded atralght across tha Atlantic for American lard, with no money passing. , Before 1934, Germany wat a large buyer of American lard, taking about a third of our export ex-port of tha commodity. In the patt few years , thit haa fallen greatly, because Germany hadn't tha money to buy, though lard it desperately needed in tha reich. The present negotiations have run up tha domestic price of lard in the future fu-ture market from 30 to 35 cents a hundred pounds. Tha proposal -la not without precedent California Cali-fornia fruit and Virginia apple growert have already tried It out, swapping their products for German fertilizer. Such barter dealt are entirely legal. The goods brought to thit country art subject to high tariffs, at Germany haa no reciprocal re-ciprocal treaty. Tha fact that cooperatives have been rigorously suppressed In Germany and that therefore American cooperatives would be helping a government opposed to their own prin-, prin-, ciplea will probably not affect the deal. Business Busi-ness it business. Yet every yard of wire or piece of machinery brought In under such an arrangement arrange-ment it one less for American shops to make. In the South American deals, produce sent to Germany it paid for in "Aski" marks, expendible expend-ible only in Germany. Tha result of this it huge stocks of the "funny money" which must be spent for German goods, even If It It later found that mouth organs, canary birds and cannon can-non are tha only things that can be bought with It. The proposed American deal and the now thwarted Mexican deal were complete and final fi-nal in themselves, with no later Implications except ex-cept the precedent Whether this arrangement will work out, no one knows. But it will be Interesting to watch the extension into the United States of a trading system to which thit country it in principle opposed. |