AFTER THE WAR

Grey River Argus, 25 May 1942, Page 1

AFTER THE WAR

RECOVERY PERIOD A THREE YEARS’ ESTIMATE. LONDON, May 22. Mr. J. M. Keynes, the famous British economist, in a speech at Manchester University, referred to the post-war burden. “I believe that it will lake us three years, to recover from the effects of the war,” he said. ■ “During that period we must willingly submit to discipline—■ progressively less severe than in war-'time, but 'very difficult to bear in peace-time. Alfter that period we can reasonably expect to attain a measure of prosperity and health, not only, not less, but higher even than before. We can only lay sound foundations for that by accepting discipline in the first three years, during which we will have to use our brains as never before.

“The orderly, transition from war to peace without the last time’s disorderly demobilisation can avoid waste of labour or materials or excessive transitional unemployment. It is net going to be easy. It requires the maintenance in principle of many of 'the war controls, and all rationing until the actual effects of the abundance of supplies prove that control and rationing are unnecessary. We will have to be full of plans, unlimited in our ambitions of projects, but rigidly disciplined in the order and pace of their execution. Mr. Keynes continued “It will be a fme such as it has not been our good fortune to enjoy for many years for the use of political, economic and constructive imagination.” Mr. Keynes added that Britain’s relations with the rest of the world were the clue to all else. Britain America, and Russia would have the task of. laying the foundatins for world relations in which every country can, without hindrance, exchange its surplus produce for the goods it needed from other countries. It was not a matter of niggardliness of nature, but of organisation of relations with honest purpose and hard, untrammelled thinking. Mr. Keynes, referring to one aspect particularly concerning Manchester, said: “The future of Britain essentially depends on the great expansion of the export trade. With that assured, the fest will be comparatively easy. Without it our hones for the future are sunk. It simply must not happen. There can be' no ‘ifs’ about it. We must increase the volume of our exports by at least 50 per cent, compared with 1938. That means returning to what we were doing in 1929.”

The “Financial News” comments: “Mr Keynes’s remarks should go far toward overcoming the wave- of defeatism that seems to have seized the export,trade in general and Lancashire in particular. It is high time that someone with Mr. Keynes’s authority delivered himself in this sense. By the end of the war the world will literally be starved for manufactures —much more 'than at the end of the last war. Immediately 'after the termination of hostilities most countries will be anxious to replenish their depleted Nocks and manufacturers’ problems wHI not be to find overseas customers, but to produce the goods they need”’