PRODUCE MORE

Auckland Star, Volume LXXII, Issue 272, 17 November 1941, Page 7

PRODUCE MORE

MIDDLE EAST NEEDS British Effort To Save Ships In War Britisli Ofllcial Wireless. Rec. 2 p.m. RUGBY, Nov. 16. Delegates. representing Aden. Cyprus. East Africa, Egypt, Lebanon. Malu, Palestine. Sudan, Syria. Transjordan and Turkey, have attended a three-day meeting at the Middle East supply centre at the British Embassy in Cairo. The meeting decided on the measures to be taken to ensure essential supplies for the countries in the Middle East, while making drastic reductions in the demands on Allied shipping for non-essentials.

Mr. Oliver Lyttelton, British Minister in the Middle East, in addressing the gathering, said: "Cut out luxuries and stimulate local production to the utmost. Use only the essentials of existence. Cut down the demands for imports in a most drastic manner, and reduce the turnround of ships so as not to lose one precious hour in port."

Mr. Lyttelton pointed out how Britain, by concentrating her raw materials, machinery, factory space and skilled labour on the most essential work, and by strict rationing of food and clothing, had beer, able greatly to reduce civil imports and devote increased production power to efforts designed to further the prosecution of the war. He said that whenever full use was not made of local powers of production, whenever superfluous crops were produced, whenever cereals were imported where they could be grown, the hour of victory was postponed.

The object of the supply centre, he stated, was not only to stimulate local production in the Middle East so as to save shipping, but generally to ensure that the countries concerned should not suffer from cutting off their normal sources of supply in Europe through Axis invasion, and of other sources through the concentration of shipping on war supplies. In pursuit of this policy steps were being taken to grow more food in the countries concerned.

The contrast between British anxiety to ensure adequate supplies in the countries where Allied forces are operating and the Axis policy of deliberate and merciless plunder in the occupied States, has not gone unnoticed in the Middle East, particularly in countries like Syria and Lebanon, which have recentlv exchanged Axis penetration for the benefits of co-operation with the British Empire.