MONEY FOR WAR

Evening Post, Volume CXXVIII, Issue 114, 10 November 1939, Page 7

MONEY FOR WAR

STRENGTH OF ALLIES

GERMANY OVERSTRAINED

EXPERT SUMS UP

(British Official Wireless.)

(Received November 10, 1 p.m.)

RUGBY, November 9.

In an. interesting address to the Royal Philosophical Society in Glasgow last night Professor Shirras, former Director of Statistics with the Government of India and Professor of Economics at Bombay University, surveyed the war potentials of Great Britain and Germany mainly from the economic viewpoint. Special interest attaches to Professor Shirras's address in view of the close contact in which he has been for many years with German economic and financial conditions and the first-hand information he has received from the Nazi officials concerned.

One of the chief factors which led Professor Shirras to a belief in almost certain victory for the Allies if they managed to hold out for the first three or four months of the war, during which time their national economies could smoothly change over from an uncontrolled to a controlled organisation, was that Germany had, financially and economically paid tlie price of war strain long before the outbreak of hostilities while the Allies, in contrast to the resultant overstrained and already exploited reserve forces in Germany, possessed enormous reserves. Professor Shirras also referred to the vastly superior credit position of the Allies. Germany, he said, since the last war had been a debtor country, and now possessed a minimum of gold, foreign exchange, and foreign investments. Her difficulties in trading were vastly increased by Britain's command of the sea. Professor Shirras said that with controlled economy Britain's national income could quite well rise from some £4,000,000,000 to some £7,000,000,000. Assuming the same proportion of our expenditure as in the last'year of the last war, we would be able to increase our expenditure as we got to the maximum war effort to at least £300,000,000 a month. We should at least be able to devote half the total resources of the community to the prosecution of the war as we did in the last war, and. with the national income increased in real terms by 15 or 20 per cent., might well pay an even higher percentage. Germany, on the other hand, Professor Shirras contended, was already at the peak of her war effort.