Ashburton Guardian Magna est Veritas et Prævalebit THURSDAY, AUGUST 7, 1941. AMERICA’S CONTRIBUTION.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 61, Issue 253, 7 August 1941, Page 4

Ashburton Guardian Magna est Veritas et Prævalebit THURSDAY, AUGUST 7, 1941. AMERICA’S CONTRIBUTION.

Motorists in New Zealand who have been complaining of the restrictions on the consumption of petrol probably received with surprise the report that the Secretary for the Interior intends to limit to daylight hours the sale of motor fuel in the Eastern sections of the United States. That the country that produces sixty per cent, of the world’s supply should find it necessary to impose restrictions on consumption seems an anomaly, but the explanation is that it is not production • but transportation that presents difficulty. The bulk of the oil' for the Eastern States, where the consumption is enormous, is carried by inter-coastal tankers and in order to implement the country’s effort in support of Britain and the Democracies the United States Maritime Commission has transferred a considerable proportion —possibly fifty or sixty of a total of 345 —from their normal trade to the supply of British and Allied requirements. The fact that a responsible member of the Cabinet is considering a move that cannot fail to cause inconvenience to a large section of the people is another demonstration of the extent to which popular opinion favours every possible assistance to those who are engaged in the front line of the fight for democracy and freedom. (The present attitude of the American people owes some of its strength to the development in the Far East, but its main growth was engendered by the realisation that Britain’s fight was really theirs, that if Britain were vanquished their cherished ideals of government and social privileges and rights would be threatened by a force whose only creed is might and which can be overcome and destroyed only by opposing might. Thus it is that peoples whose ideological creeds are the opposite or each other are united in a common task.