POST-WAR NEEDS

Auckland Star, Volume LXXIII, Issue 46, 24 February 1942, Page 5

POST-WAR NEEDS

ALLIES PREPARE Food And Clothing For Victims Of Aggression British Official Wireless. Rec. 11 a.m- RUGBY, Feb. 23. Man's primary needs when the shooting stops will be food, feed and fibres—food and clothes for himself ,and food for his animals, said Mr. Arthur Greenwood, speaking in London on the work of the Allied Post-War Requirements Bureau. "The situation we shall face," he declared, "will be infinitely graver and on a much larger scale than that at the end of the last war, but we shall at least have this advantage that we have started our preparations in good time."

Sketching the progress of plans, he said: "It is over a year and a half since the British Government began to consider the problems that would arise at the end of hostilities. We were confronted with the fact that the war, apart from military destruction, had everywhere dislocated trade and markets. We saw the piling up in warehouses and on quaysides of vast quantities of goods which could not be moved. Some of these export surpluses were perishable, but others could be stored.

"So we began to consider how the dire necessities of exporting countries could be relieved and had the lot turned to good account by building up, out of surpluses, resources which could be made available for the sustenance of starving Europe when hostilities ceased. It has become'a very complicated problem. Some surpluses grew, others vanished and faced us with shortages, but out of our experiences we began to work out a plan for post-war relief.

"These preliminary steps were followed last autumn by the Allied meeting at St. James Palace when all our Allies agreed to a resolution declaring that it was their common aim to secure that supplies of food, raw materials and articles of prune necessity should be made available for post-war needs of the countries liberated, from Nazi oppression.

"We, thereupon, developed our bureau. This is now building up estimates of the immediate requirements of the liberated peoples of Europe with a view to making the necessary provision for the day when we can go to the aid of the victims. How big-this taslcwiH be cannot yet be foretold, but we know it will call for international co-opera-tion and organisation stretching far beyond the provision of human food.

"We expect there will be-surpluses available in the world of something to eat, something to wear and something to drink—wheat for human beings, maize for animal food, cotton and wool for clothes, and coffee and tea to drink.

"In other words our primary needs will be food, feed and fibres, and we will have to rush food, feed and fibres to the places where they are needed. Shipping may be a difficulty. For a time inland transport on the Continent will be in a parlous condition. We shall, no doubt, have to grapple with epidemic j diseases and these problems ■will call for organisation and plans are now being worked out. They will carry us out of the field of relief into that of reconstruction which, must go on hand in hand with the emergency measures."