Anglo-German Coal Agreement The agreement reached this week between representatives
of the British and German coal industries lays the basis for a division of world export-markets between European pro- ducers. Britain and Germany control 8o per cent. of the European export trade, and thus the settlement of differences between them means that an international agreement should not be difficult. The object of the agreement is to eliminate competition between exporters by methods of subsidies and price-cutting, and to stabilise the export-markets; it is reported that the Anglo-German conversations will be followed by discussions covering 25 different industries. These arrange- ments show that neither German nor British business is anxious for the trade war threatened by Herr Hitler in his Reichstag speech; and by freeing trade relations between the two countries they may also ease their political relations. Indeed, they point the way to amicable economic co-operation between Great Britain and Germany; certainly the concep- tion of dividing world-markets between the two countries follows very closely Herr Hitler's ideas of how Europe should develop.
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