AIR FORCE FART

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXVIII, Issue 20625, 28 November 1941, Page 4

AIR FORCE FART

DEFENCE OF DOMINION BRITISH BOMBERS POWER IF REQUIRED (Per Press Association.) DUNEDIN, this day. “Thanks to the understanding of the leaders of Great Britain because they appreciate our problems, our request for bombers was agreed to and if the war spreads to the Pacific we have an air force that will be able to give a very good account of itself against the kind of attack from the sea that our service chiefs envisage,” said the Prime Minister, the Rt. Hon. P. Fraser, during the course of an address on New Zealand's war effort to the Dunedin Chamber of Commerce yesterday. The Prime Minister also said it was obvious from press reports that Britain was now able to reinforce her naval strength in the Pacific. Mr. Fraser also discussed the industrial war effort. “We are handicapped,” he said, “by lack of a basic industry of iron and steel. Efforts have been made to explore the possibilities of the steel industry here. If it were a period of lasting peace there would not be the same justification for doing it, but the possibility of our being cut off, even from Australia, makes it necessary that we should develop industry as much as we can and in the meantime we will experfment with iron sand deposits.