SHIPS IMPERATIVE

Grey River Argus, 20 August 1942, Page 6

SHIPS IMPERATIVE

MR NASH’S MESSAGE To British Public I British Official Wireless; (Rec. 10.50) RUGBY, Aug. 18. Hon. W. Nash,, N. Z. Minister to Washington, in a broadcast on Tuesday night gave “A Message of Hope and Engouragement for the Future’’ to listeners of Britain. He referred especially to the shipping situation. He said that the battle of production had been won, but given arms, equipment, and men to use them, it was still essential to have the means of transporting them. Dealing with the 1 shipping problem, Mr. Nash said: “Transportation might decide the issue of slavery or freedom lor mankind for generations. We could lose the war, and also all of the freedom that we have achieved. In any and all of the theatres of wap our efforts must not be relaxed.”

Shipping was, indeed, the most urgent of many vital problems confronting the United Nations. Unless we could solve this problem 'the chances were that the tremendous production effort which the United States, particularly, was putting forth would be largely neutralised.

' Mr. Nash/said that Pearl Harbour : marked the end of one era of American h.story, and the beginning of another. Mr. Nash said: “American inidustry, attitudes, habits and way of life have all undergone a remarkable transformation. With a section of its people primarily wedded to ways of peace, the American people have become a nation dedicated to the ends of total war, and determined to get the job over as quick as possible.” “The Americans,” he said, “are performing miracles of construction, but the hour is lute and the need is great. By our capacity to build ships, keep them afloat to carry war material and reinforcements on an ever-increasing scale to Russia, the Pacific, Mid-East, and China, the final outcome of this conflict may be decided.” Mr. Nash stressed “the fullest and fairest consideration” which, he said, New Zealand’s own needs and those of the Pacific territories she had undertaken to protect, had at all times received. Yet while the loss of the last remaining bases for a future offensive action in the South-west Pacific would mean a disastrous, even fatal, setback to the l United Nations’ strategy, he and the New Zealand people were (equally convinced that their future .safety was no less vitally dependent on Russia’s capacity for continued resistance in Europe; on the ability of the Allies, to hold Egypt and destroy Rommel; on the success with which China would maintain the fight; and on the future role of India; also on the outcome of the effort to meet the submarine menace' in the Atlantic, and above all, on the continuing security of Britain herself. “We must therefore,” he said, “prepare for any and every eventuality, and serve where the need is greatest. In the Pacific, our first immediate objective must be supremacy in 'the air and on the sea.” .

Urging the immediate formation of a World Reconstruction Development Council, Mr. Nash said: “The United Nations can only win together. Weshould get together now, map out a positive programme for a world of peace, .and make the United Nations more than an illusorv phra'se." He ■appealed for the transformation of the United Nations into a symbol of real and vital unity, and suggested the setting up now of a World Reconstruction Council for mapping out a positive programme for carrying on a world of peace. That Council should have subsidiary councils organised on a regional basis. The job of these councils, he explained, would be to spread right materials in the right place, 'to readjust stock positions, to deal with the problem of surplus after the war; to arrange for a continuance of the world lease-lend procedure that will enable plant and equipment and raw materials to be transferred to countries where the need is greatest; and generally to see commodities and production facilities are mia.de available, according to the capacity •to produce on the one hand and the relative need on the other.

Regarding the diversity of the united efforts politically, economically and socially, he concluded: “The deferences which decide the free nations are. of small consequence, compared with the basis of identity of purpose, which unites them, if we recognise the fact that we ’ are now entering into a new phase of history. For the peace we earnestly hope for let us arm ourselves just as throughly as we have 'armed for war.