John Zube, 7 Oxley St., Berrima, NSW,Australia 2577     9.4.1985

Dr. Walter Zander,
16 Alvanley Gardens, London NW6

Dear Dr. Zander,
                 I have still not been able to follow up all the suggestions you made in our two talks in 84. I am busy in reproducing, among other things, some old monetary freedom writings. Among them a work by Henry V. POOR, Money and its Laws, 1877, which none of the other montary freedom advocates seems to have noticed.
I do hope that you received my transcript and that it was legible to you. I would like to be allowed to quote from this. Perhaps you find the energy and time to send me the corrections and additions you find necessary?

You had asked me for literature on the connection between monetary freedom and peace. Alas, apart from the letters and drafts of v.Bth. and my own, there is not much of this literature around. I would send you my own two books on this - but one is only a manuscript, in a faded original or imperfect duplicates, also in a retyped issue, which served me as a microfiche master, of which I could only send a photocopy, or a microfiche. The latter would be of no use to you without a reading machine. The second book is in very small and faint print - from my first attempt at offset-printing, and would be poison to your eyes.
Thus it may have to suffice if I try to summarize the case somewhat and perhaps send you some copies of relevant Beckerath papers?
Beckerath was never a narrow-minded monetary freedom zealot, what others would term a "money crank". He was aware of and interested in wider issues, a peaceful and just society in general and made just as radical proposals for these. But he also discovered that there is almost always a monetary freedom link to the other social, economic and political problems. I remember him drafting e.g. the Statutes for a "Gesellschaft zur Bekaempfung der Ehelosigkeit" and it tied in the freedom to issue and the choice of standards - although this might seem absurd on first sight.

To simplify matters to me, I might just copy two short entries from my book : "An ABC against nuclear war", whose text in the original is too small and faint for you to read :

1.) MONETARY DESPOTISM
Under the forced currency of a centralized and monopolistice note issuing bank the economy will always fluctuate between inflations and deflations and frequently have both at the same time. The resulting crises nourish totalitarian movements, ideologies, racism, nationalism and religious hatreds. They make despotism relatively strong, democracies relatively weak. They condemn many revolutions to falure and prevent many people from fleeing from a dictatorship or deserting its armed forces. In these and similar ways does it preserve the danger of nuclear war.
Together with taxes it allows governments to finance anti-people weapons, even against the will of the majority.
By means of the monopoly for the issue of exchange media for cash wage payments, governments could alwasy direct people into employment at the nuclear weapons and auxiliary military facilities, simply by starving other employment opportunities of cash.
See: Deflation, Desertion, Dictatorships, Economic Freedom, Employment, Freedom of Migration, Free Trade, Inflation, Market, Monetary Freedom, Nationalism, Refugees, Refusal to Accept, Totalitarianism, Unemployment, Peace Plans 9-11.
( I will not attempt to copy all these here. In Peace Plans 13 & 14 I tried also to prove that monetary freedom would be essential for the realization of a successful tax strike and for some voluntary taxation schemes and that both would help to prevent wars. Let me just quote one further entry from the above-named book. All of them are all to short, offered merely in assertions, without proofs, in order to cram in something like 500 different points that I tried to make.)

MONETARY FREEDOM : Without monetary freedom or free banking there will be unemployment and inflation and both make it easier for the war hawks.
Monetary fredom could assure employment to workers who resigned from nuclear weapons factories, for deserters and refugees from dictatorships.
Monetary freedom would do away with depressions, and after a while, when savings, under full employment, would build up rapidly, it could even abolish involuntary poverty and would thus help to disarm the communist fanatics who believe that communism would deliver the goods and that nothing else could.
It would be essential to finance any prolonged liberation or revolutionary war. It would be helpful for paying some of the less idealistic deserters from the other side. It would be necessary for the integration of millions of deserters and refugees into the production process - in the shortest possible time. (Beckerath mentioned days, at most.)
The best defences of the right to issue private money are to be found in the writings of Arthur Kitson and E.C. Riegel ( especially in the latter's "The New Approach to Freedom"). Both didn't find the right technicques to make the best use of this freedom. They can be found in the writings of Dr. Walter Zander, Prof. Heinrich Rittershausen and Ulrich von Beckerath. See Peace Plans Nos. 9-11.
See: Deseertion, Dictatorships, Employment, Financing, Inflation, Monetary Despotism, Refusal to Accept, Unemployment.
(It tried to interlink all points, alphabetically listed in this book, by numerous cross-references and some point by point programmes in the end. )

One could and should list many more points here :
Beckerath stressed the importance of free and high interest rates, freedom to invest, freedom from taxation and inflation and the importance this could have in accumulating so much in e.g. old age pension funds that everybody could become a millionaire, through high insurance contributions stretched over a 40 year working life. ($13 annually for 40 years would give a pension of 3000 annually for 20 years. $ 1300 annually for 40 years would thus give 300 000 annually for 20 years. Q.E.D. Can any communist expropriation scheme promise everybody as much? How high would productivity be with as much capital available to increase it?

 Almost all underdeveloped countries are, under present conditions, a potential cause of war, if they have not already become involved, by revolutionary attempts, in the East/West struggle or in some nationalistic and collectivistic wars. Monetary freedom would be an as essential part in their rapid development as it was once in Prussia, the US, and Scotland  and as it is necessary for the further rapid developing of the supposedly already "developed" countries.

In the whole sphere of cooperative and voluntary socialism many absurd and self-defeating systems are proposed and practised for a while. Beckerath had sound notions on this and also was aware that long term success in this depends also on the application of monetary freedom views. Successful voluntary and cooperative socialism widely practised in the Western World now would help to ideologically undermine and finally topple totalitarian state socialism and the danger of war which it brings with it. 

Another important point is that the panarchistic society which Beckerath envisioned, which would realize full minority autonomy for all who want it, and thereby eliminate many motives for wars and revolutions, would become practicable and acceptable only under conditions of full employment and in the relatively calm times of stable currencies. Otherwise fears and hatreds of foreigners as potential competitors, predominate in public opinion and would disallow any extension of liberties for them and dissenters.

The connection between Free Trade, monetary freedom and peace is almost too obvious to need pointing out. Both Beckerath and Milhaud have written much on this and I need not tell you anything on this.

But you will possibly enjoy the copy of a letter of Bth. to Ri. on this, written 2.6.40, seemingly in the Nazi-sense. Beckerath always said : Write as if a censor were looking over your shoulder.

Beckerath and Rittershausen sponsored Holzhauer's writings on "Cash Payments in Occupied Territories" with several purposes in mind : To demonstrate the applicability of monetary freedom under all conditions. To make wars less oppressive and long lasting, to induce thinking about a similar financing or revolutions against despotic regimes. Beckerath had finished a manuscript on the latter subject. It was burned with his library in 1943 during an air : One of the less known great losses of WW II.

Governments in exile, to focus all opposition forces against dictatorships and turn them into useful allies, should be fully autonomous and free to issue tax foundation money to their supporters.

On the payment of deserters who are illiterate, we discussed in detail how they could and should be paid with privately coined silver coins. His whole programme for attracting and inducing desertion from enemy conscripts, en masse, is very interestingand has not yet been compiled in a single booklet. (This is planned, though.) Monetary freedom is quite essential for the success of such a scheme.

The uprising in Eastern Germany and East Berlin on June 17th 1953 ff. was quelled not only by Soviet tanks ( their commander in Berlin deserted later, but also by the communist central bank : withdrawing wage payment means from all insurrctionist areas. This is a little known feature which Bth. pointed out and stressed in his discussions of preparations for another and this time successful uprising.

During the Bank Enquete of 1908/9, it was explicitly pointed out that legal tender would be required to finance the next war. You may remember Beckerath pointing this out frequently.
The civil war programme called the Communist Manifesto, does also make no bones about this in its point 5.
Would WW I have been as long and terrible without legal tender, could the inflation and World Crisis have happened after without it and central banking? Would we not have been saved the nazi regime and its crimes and the present preparations for WWIII?

People ignorant of the benefits of monetary freedom do usually favour immigration restrictions and these prolong nationalism and racism and the threat of war. When immigrants cannot cross frontiers, sooner or later conscripts will. ( A vairation of Bastiat's famous saying : When goods do not cross frontiers, soldiers will. )
                                          
Much could be said on Beckerath's land reform proposals and how open coops on Hertzka's principles, with a few variations, could in a libertarian way "socialize" natural resources, with voluntary time-purchases of such enterprises for the transition period and how monetary and financial freedom ties in with this. The Georgists and others are right in considering access to land as an important factor for peace and freedom. 
I had noted for possible copying for you, some Beckerath papers in my filmed issue on pages 996,1002,1293,1297,1309 and 17. If you are still interested, I might copy them for you in my next mailing. For the time being two of my recent translations of 2 of his letters are enclosed. (To Schinnagel, 1.5.59, to Naumann, 23.1.57.)

These short hints, together with these copies of old letters by Ulrich von Beckerath, may suffice for the time being.
I would gladly take up any specific point - as far as my all too limited knowledge and references last - with you, should you be interested and bother to set it out in handwriting.

I have collected some more Beckerath material for my microfiched collection of his writings. Henry Meulen destroyed almost all his correspondence, under the illusion that his magazine would reproduce the essense. How little of Beckerath;s ideas have found their way into it and, to my knowledge, no criticism of his monetary ideas was reproduced by Meulen at all. I am just involved in producing an index to articles in The Individualist, just using 2 drafts by M. and one, for my incomplete collection, made by myself. The correspondence of Rittershausen I perused and copied, although incompletely. His material ( I hope complete ) has been given to the University of Koeln, as a Berlin friend wrote to me recently. One other survivor of the small Berlin circule around Bth.,  Egon Kortmann, already very sickly, sent me what he had left. The remaining papers of Beckerath are in in Duewal's possession in Berlin. I have not yet been able to see them during my two Berlin visits after Bth.'s death, and have only hopes for the third attempt.
Have you still got your post WWII correspondence with B. complete and is there any chance to get it from you for copying? Likewise your correspondence with Rittershausen? Could you perhaps leave at least a note that it be sent to me after your death, for utilization of its social reform contents in my series? I would gladly pay the shipping costs and something for the trouble.
As I assured you before, I would welcome any other contributions, original and reprints, for my microfiched peace plans series.

I tried to list some of the main Bth. ideas in my supplementary literature list of January 1985, which I have not, I believe, sent to you previously.

                    Best wishes for now and hoping that I still  find you
                    mentally active on my next visit to London,