Luther on the Carpet

If it be true as Swedes believe that their scrawny old King Gustaf talked the roughest sort of turkey to Chancellor Adolf Hitler on his last visit to Berlin, then His Majesty has few more ardent admirers than the U. S. Ambassador to Germany, outwardly mild but inwardly rampant William Edward Dodd, onetime professor of history at the University of Chicago.

Some of the thoughts which have crossed Professor Dodd's mind since he reached Berlin have been bold in the extreme. He expresses himself strongly to Mrs. Dodd and the children. By last week he had called twice on the German Foreign Office, to demand equal treatment for Germany's U. S. creditors who are receiving far less than her Dutch and Swiss creditors. This outrage, Professor Dodd would like to have hotly told Chancellor Hitler, must be corrected.

When President Roosevelt found that Ambassador Dodd's first and second calls had produced not even a reply he took what Germans last week regarded as the "unprecedented" step of summoning to the White House owlish German Ambassador Dr. Hans Luther. On his departure bald Dr. Luther pinked hotly when he discovered that correspondents knew what the President had called him on the carpet about.

In effect Dr. Hjalmar Schacht, autocratic President of the Reichsbank, has cut the interest payments on German bonds held in the U. S. by refusing to let the full amount of payment be transferred out of Germany. Switzerland and Holland, by agreeing to increase their imports of German goods, have received full and preferential interest transfers. As for Adolf Hitler, one of his war cries has been against the iniquity of "interest slavery," the payment of interest being tainted in his mind with a stigma not unlike that attached by President Roosevelt to hoarding. So hot grew the squabbling of U. S. private creditors for their interest in Berlin last week that Dr. Schacht rushed off for a rest to Kiel. "I admit the necessity of paying interest on borrowed capital," said he, "but the common good should be considered before all else."

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