EFFECT OF REARMAMENT

King Country Chronicle, Volume XXXI, Issue 4956, 16 February 1937, Page 5

EFFECT OF REARMAMENT

PROSPERITY IN ENGLANO. TRANSPORT AND ROAD CONTROL. Rearmament activity in Great Britain is having a stimulating influence on business right throughout the country, according to Captain R. G. England, a director of the travel and transport firm of Carter and Paterson, who visited New Plymouth yesterday in the course of a business tour of New Zealand. “There is a great call for trained men in many departments of industry and large firms everywhere are feeling the effects of this demand,” he continued. The manufacture of gas masks alone, he said, was absorbing hundreds and thousands of girls and men. Prosperity had certainly returned and it did not appear to be shortlived. As the rearmament plan neared completion the business development taking place now would gradually follow it up, and there should be no slump following the cessation of the rearmament. Discussing transport problems, Captain England expressed the view that it was necessary in these times for the Government to have some competent means of controlling transport, apart from the reason that the enormous deathrate on the roads must be brought to a minimum. In the last few years a vast sum of money has been spent in England in the development of roads and, though the necessity might never arise, the utilisation of roads was a very vital matter to the Government in the event of anything happening. There must be control of roads to enable the distribution of a nation’s commodities, that was so essential in a national calamity. The rdad safety campaign hi England was going* on steadily, said Captain England. It was much more educative than compulsory, but had the effect of bringing people to realise that the measures were for the nation’s good.