MUST HAVE HELP.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVI, Issue 294, 12 December 1935, Page 7

MUST HAVE HELP.

BRITISH SHIPPING.

Problem of Pacific Competition

Revived.

IMPERIAL POSITION QUOTED

United Press Association.—Copyright,

LONDON, December 11

Addressing the annual meeting of the P. and O. Steam Navigation Company, the chairman, the Hon. Alexander Shaw, declared that if the Governments of Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand wished to retain any Empire service across the Pacific they must assist those who for so many years had upheld the British flag at such grave loss.

If the Canadian, Australian and New Zealand line were allowed to perish it was not likely that it would be replaced by another British concern.

The problem went beyond the interests of commercial concerns or the economic loss involved to the Dominions through abandoning their shipping. It went to the root of our Imperial position.

The shipping policy of foreign coun tries liad inflated world tonnage ir

excess of the present or probable future requirements of world trade. The result was an uneconomic level of freights. The cure was international rationalisation, but the efforts of the Chamber of Shipping in that direction had met with a chilly answer from important maritime Powers. Meet Subsidy With Subsidy. Britain must show herself resolved to obtain fair play for British shipping. If argument failed, she must meet subsidy with subsidy, restriction with restriction.

The proportion of British shipping serving home ports had declined year after year. The facts had been brought to the attention of the Empire and British Governments, yet so far as liners were concerned not a single official hand had been stretched out to save them from the inevitable results of economic warfare with Powers prepared to spend the taxpayer's money lavishly on a mercantile marine not required by their own or world trade, but merely ancillary to naval ambitions or the desire to extinguish sections of the economic trades Britain had built up.

The Council of the British Empire League to-day carried a resolution drawing the attention of the Government to the urgent need for co-opera-tion with the Dominions to achieve an Empire shipping policy and preserve British steamship services in the face of State-aided competition.

Sir Robert Home said: "If the situation is going to be one in which American lines will be the only ones plying between Australia and New Zealand and San Francisco, and if the result is also going to be inimical to traflic with Australia, New Zealand and Vancouver, we might as well throw up the sponge and acknowledge ourselves completely defeated on the sea."

BRITISH SUBSIDY

TRAMP SHIPPING ASSISTED. British Official Wireless. RUGBY, December 11. In reply to a Parliamentary question regarding the continuation of the- tramp shipping subsidy, Dr. Leslie Burgin, Parliamentary Secretary to the Board of Trade, announced that as a result of a detailed examination of the operation of the subsidy the Government was satisfied it had brought about a distinct improvement in British tramp shipping and in the employment of. British officers and seamen, not only by direct effects, but also as a result of measures of co-operation which the subsidy had enabled shipowners to introduce.

In tlio circumstances which still persisted a withdrawal of the subsidy would endanger a continuance of those measures of co-operation and jeopardise tho improvement. The trauip shipowners' committee had applied for a continuance of the subsidy, and the Government had decided to ask Parliament to make available for a period of 12 months from January 1 next a further sum of £2,000,000 on the same general terms and conditions as before.

SHIPPING PROBLEMS

MEAT PLANS—AND THE AIR

LONDON, December 11

At the annual meeting of the P. and O. Steam Navigation Company the chairman, the Hon. A. Shaw, drew attention to the unfavourable effect of the meat restrictions, pointing out that the shipping industry was among those deserving of favourable consideration when a national policy of restriction was applied.

Referring to air mails, Mr. Shaw said the needs of the world would best be served by co-operation by air and at sea. , The directors were watching air developments, but it would be rash to assume that sea transport was destined to be supplanted by air, forcing shipping companies to preserve a large part of their assets by switching to the air.