WAR ITEMS

Grey River Argus, 7 June 1943, Page 2

WAR ITEMS

WASHINGTON, June 2. The United States Maritime Commission announced that United States merchant shipyards established a new production record in May, delivering 175 vessels of 1,782,000 deadweight tons, including fifteen tankers of sixteen thousand tons each, and 1-U Liberty ships. Production had now reached a rate of .approximately twenty million tons annually, which was a million tons above the 1943 production goal. LONDON, June 2. On the question of the separation of the administration of civil aviation from the Air Ministry, Sir A. Sinclair said in the House of Commons, 1 that the civil administration did not now come under the Air Council, but was under the control of the Parliamentary Under-Secretary for Air and himself, the Director of Civil Aviation and the Permanent Undersecretary. It had been removed from the control of the Air Council before the war. During the war. the connection between civil air transport and the Air Ministry must be maintained in the interests of : the war. After hostilities ceased in Europe, there would be the task of feeding Europe, transporting prisoners, and innumerable other tasks of the utmost urgency, and it would be imprudent to contemplate any immediate change after the war. Speaking of peace-time, the Minister said that the Air Ministry was the repository of flying zeal and ; experience, and the people in the . Ministry were determined to develop ! flying to the utmost. If they had a separate civil aviation Ministry, he doubted whether they would find the same zeal for flying as in the Air Ministry. He thought they had to consider very carefully whether. it would be right to break up aviation research and design, and place it under the control of more than one organisation. '•"’W MELBOURNE, May 26. " The widespread interest of Americans in Australia and New Zealand was reflected in the growth of the Anzac division of the British War Relief Society in the United States, said the chairman of the division, Harold Ribling at present visiting ' Australia. From the meeting in 1940

of ten Australians living in the United States, an organisation to raise money to provide all kinds of war necessities to Australia and New Zealand and entertain servicemen from these countries during their sojourns in the States, had arisen. Of the present membership of a thousand Australians, Americans, Canadians and Britishers, about five hundred belonged to Anzac countries.