FOOD CAMPAIGN

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 66, Issue 270, 27 August 1946, Page 2

FOOD CAMPAIGN

BRITISH MINISTER’S LETTER

CREW OF ARIES CALLS ON MR NASH (P.A.) WELLINGTON, Aug. 20. “We hope you will be the forerunners of a regular three-day service between Britain and New Zealand within the next decade/’ said the Minister of Finance (the lit. Hon. W. Nash) this afternoon to Air Commodore N. H. d’Aeth, who is in charge of the Aries mission, and to members of the crew of the record-breaking aircraft when they called upon him in Parliament Buildings to present a letter from the British Minister of Food (Mr John Strachey) to the New Zealand Government. The letter expressed appreciation of New Zealand’s efforts in providing foodstuffs for Britain during her time of difficulty. Mr Nash apologised for the absence of the Prime Minister (the Rt. Hon. P. Fraser), who was confined to his home to-day with a slight attack of influenza.

Mr Nash said the coupon saving campaign in the Dominion had been somewhat disappointing at times, but that did not imply anything detrimental to tlie feeling of the people of this country toward Britain. It had been occasioned by concern felt at the shipment of some of ohr produce elsewhere, and by conflicting opinions as to shortages in Britain.

Mr Nash said that from his observation no one in Britain was actually hungry, but the diet was monotonous, and for such items as tomatoes, bananas and apples people had to queue up in food lines.

Mr Nash expressed the Government’s congratulations to the crew on the record they had achieved, and said New Zealanders looked forward to the time when they would be only three days’ air travel from Britain and 24 hours from the United States. He thought the latter was a likely development because he had recently travelled from California to New Zealand in less than 31 hours.

People Responsive

Mr T. N. Smallwood, chairman of the national famine emergency committee. said ihe public of New Zealand had been very responsive to the appeal to help Britain. He emphasised that the Dominion’s campaign was not restricted tb coupon savings, but included the sending of individual parcels to Britain and a drive for increased production in the coming season, in which farmers were responding magnificently. Mr Nash, speaking again after Mr Smallwood, said although he knew that the Famine Emergency Committee did not urge the sending of food parcels to Britain, he personally had seen the joy these parcels brought into homes which received them, and lie believed that joy was something worth breaking the rules of equity for.'

Air Commodore d’Aeth said the time for the -flight could have been reduced spmewhat, had the weather been better. He said it had been planned six months ago to arrive in New Zealand on August 24, and that had been done. The crew had not been hand-picked. It was simply an expanded crew selected at the Empire Navigation school, to which had been added three instructors who would give lectures to R.N.Z.A.F. personnel while the Aries was in New Zealand. Referring to New Zealand’s co-opera-tion Air Commodore d’Aeth mentioned that at the Wanganui hotel where they had lunched yesterday they had been told that coupons were not required from them because members of the hotel staff had contributed coupons to provide for the visitors’ meal. The real purpose of the flight had not been to break the record, but to cement the relations between Britain and New Zealand. Those relations, he found, were already so strong that from that viewpoint their mission was really unnecessary.