MUST BE HUSBANDED

Evening Post, Volume CXXXV, Issue 102, 1 May 1943, Page 6

MUST BE HUSBANDED

RESERVES IN THE PACIFIC (Rec. 1.50 p.m.) PERTH, May 1. The Allied Nations were like brothers with a common purse, said the Prime Minister, Mr. Curtin, in a public address at Fremantle. What one spent the other could not spend. More aeroplanes for one meant fewer aeroplanes for the other. This implied, he said, that until the United Nations were successful in! Europe there could be no reallocation of power to the United Nations in the Pacific, which would receive merely sufficient strength for a holding war. Tnus the reserves of the Pacific nations would have to be husbanded over a very long period. Australia, Mr. Curtin added, was going through a form of growing pins in adjusting itself to the war. Men had actually gone on strike because there was not enough tobacco or enough beer. "I am utterly unconcerned if there is not enough beer," he declared. "It is true that I have given directions that soldiers shall ao work other people won't do, but at is also fundamentally true that men trained for fighting ought not to be employed at labouring." ,One of Australia's most serious shortages, the Prime Minister said, was that of housing. This was a grave problem, but there could be no programme of construction while the war lasted. The Australian people would have to show stoical endurance and stand a great deal of hardship in the times ahead.