* * * * Exit Dr. Schacht Herr Hitler is
apparently unwilling to announce officially Dr. Schacht's resignation from the Ministry of Economics ; but it appears to have already taken effect. The retiring Minister remains President of the Reichsbank, but his term of office there expires in the spring. He was one of the first to desire Herr Hitler's appointment as Chancellor ; more than any other man, he enabled National Socialism to overcome its economic difficulties ; now he joins those other Nationalists who could not control the Frankenstein monster they had hoped to use as a puppet. And given the elaborate system of currency regulations, exchange restrictions, import and export control, which Dr. Schacht has so brilliantly manipulated and whose intricacies he alone understood, it is ironical that his reason for resignation is his " disapproval of interference with private industry." What he really disapproves of is that the control is no longer his, and has passed into the hands of soldiers and • " self sufficiency experts." The reorganisation of the Ministry of Economics as an organ of General G6ring's Four-Year Plan, and under the direction of Colonel Hanneken, Colonel Loeb, and Colonel Thomas, the Reichswehr's economic experts, will merely regularise a position that has already existed in fact for some months. But it is worth remembering that Dr. Schacht is an expert in knowing when to leave public life and when to return. He abandoned the Republic in time ; his retirement now will certainly weaken its successor.
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