The enterprise can well be compared with that of Signor Mussolini on the Pontine Marshes. The German Government offers to meet 40 per cent of the cost to everyone who builds a house or who proposes to carry out reparations and improvements. The result of this step is scarcely to be believed. The building trade, hitherto at a very low ebb, has looked up and gone ahead surprisingly. And consequently so have all the allied industries.
Factories are at work day and night.
In the spring of 1934 in many large German cities not a single skilled man in the building trade was out of work. This flourishing state of affairs repercussed on the machine industry and gave work to again another ten thousand men. Hitler, himself an ardent mechanic, has found the way for a vast revival in the motor-car industry by reducing the tax. The number of cars on the road doubled in 1933. One can judge of the cheerful position of affairs in this direction from the assurances made by motor-car manufacturers that they are in a position to deliver the goods at once.