THE B.A.O.R. BLACK MARKET
SIR,—In recent weeks many papers, including The Spectator, have pub- lished remarks amounting to the allegation of wholesale black-market dealings with German narks on the part of the troops of B.A.O.R. This casts a very unfair slur on every man who has served on the Continent for the following reasons: (1) The ordinary soldier or airman is ignorant of the intricacies of international currency and the theory behind paper money, but is able to understand the old simple idea of " supply and demand." He traded his spare cigarettes for what marks he could get, not an unusual business motive. (2) The Treasury, acting with the various occupational authorities and the B.A.O.R., put an entirely arti- ficial valuation on the-German mark in terms of sterling, which was very far from corresponding with reality. (3) It is an elementary prin- ciple that a paper currency must represent goods and services or become debased and meaningless The shortage of goods of the type which are prime necessities. such as food, clothes, shelter, &c., available to the Germans in exchange for marks made the currency virtually worthless. Meanwhile, the urge to obtain somehow the wherewithal to exist over- rode rationing and other regulations of the severity of those unavoidably put on the German nation.
Under these conditions cameras and paper marks were of value to the Germans solely in terms of their exchange value for such necessities as were obtainable. Of these necessities, including tobacco, the troops had an ample supply. Moreover, they found that German marks were valid in Government-sponsored clubs and the shops of N.A.A.F.I. and like organisations whose goods represented sterling expenditure. Thus a worthless German mark was officially given a wholly fictitious sterling value. One cannot expect the troops to understand or believe that the official backing of marks meant the loss of huge sums of money to the tax-payer. They thought that the good business they did was one of the few cheerful windfalls of war, and the belated orders and exhortations designed to stop this trade were unimaginative, and failed to explain the true cause of the trouble, which was the entirely artificial exchange-rate of sterling into German marks and vice versa. Therefore the use of the term " black market " in this matter is unfortunate. To bracket the .trading of the B.A.O.R. with the mean and treasonable activities of the deliberate black-marketeers who risked nothing for their country, and indeed tried to make personal profit out of general misfortune, is both extremely unjust and also evidence of illogical thinking.—Yours truly,
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