BRITAIN'S RESOURCES.

Auckland Star, Volume LXXI, Issue 282, 27 November 1940, Page 6

BRITAIN'S RESOURCES.

A candid, clarifying statement — preferably by Mr. Churchill—is needed to end the confusion and disquiet inevitably aroused since the report of the remarks attributed to Lord Lothian on his return to the United States. Whatever he did say, the impression left is that Britain is running short, or will soon run abort of money to pay in the United States for her enormous armament purchases there. This has been followed by discussion in

Washington concerning the possibility of relaxing the "cash and carry" provisions <>£ the neutrality law to enable Britain to buy on credit, and by the assertion of the London eorresfM>ndent of the "New York Time.i" (a pa]>er consistently and strongly pro-British) that the British censorship is preventing the dispatch of reports which would inform Americans of the "extremity" of Britain's need. Obviously, the American "cash and carry" law is a -ore handicap, and B'itain would like it to be altered, hut to allow the impression abroad that Britain will be "bankrupt" if it is not altered is a deplorable blunder, exceedingly pleasing to the Nazis. It is probably impossible to make an accurate estimate of Britain's gold and dollar resources, but Mr. J. M. Keynes, one of those who made the attempt, before the collapse of France, (•(included that "taking Britain, Fiance and Canada together" such resources were "not far short of double what they were in 1914," and that, taking everything ; nto account,| Britain's financial staying power was certainly not less than in the last.i war.