Von Papen's Plan For the moment therefore, the Chancellor is
left free to carry out the arresting economic programme he outlined in his speech at Munster on Sunday. If the Reichstag challenges that, then no doubt the Reichstag will go, but it is by no means certain that the Nazis, violently as tliey haVe criticized various features of the economic plan, will not prefer to swallow it and save the Reichstag rather than exchange Parliamentary forms for an autocracy in which they will have no part, and with the prospect of having to swallow the economic plan all the same. As for the plan itself it is a gigantic gamble, involving, by a series of elaborate and ingenious devices, the mortgaging of the future of the German Exchequer in the interests of trade revival and reduction of unemployment now. Altogether £100,000,000 is to be risked in the experiment, and the first result contem- plated is the provision of work for 1,750,000 of the unem- ployed. Quite apart from the soundness or otherwise of the machinery the weak point of the scheme is that it does nothing to create demand, except in so far as the payment of wages to the unemployed creates new pur- chasing-power. Another vulnerable provision is the per- mission given to employers to reduce wages (down to a minimum figure) in proportion to the number of new hands they take on.
