EMPIRE CO-OPERATION.

Manawatu Standard, Volume LXI, Issue 191, 15 July 1941, Page 5

EMPIRE CO-OPERATION.

UNPRECEDENTED RESULTS

CONTRIBUTIONS POOLED

(New Zealand Official News Service.) LONDON, July 13. From all parts of the British Empire comes news of efforts on a scale unimagined by the Nazis and unprecedented in the Empire's history. .It- is the task of the Empire's organisers to co-ordinate this effort to ensure that every ounce of energy generated in each part of the Empire and the Mother Country shall be used to speed up the Commonwealth war machine to its maximum velocity. Here are some of the stops they are taking in order to do so.

One of the most spectacular of the arrangements so far envisaged is that whereby Australian and New Zealand produce will bo shipped to Western Canada in order that Eastern Canada may release corresponding amounts for Britain'. Tho saving in valuable time and shipping space is obvious. This' is one of the results of the foodstuffs agreements which have just been concluded (June, 1941) between the United Kingdom, Australia, and New Zealand and which are similar to earlier arrangements whereby the United Kingdom Government agreed to buy tho whole of the surplus wool clips of Australia, Ne'V Zealand and South Africa for the duration of the war and a year following. The new agreements will provide for vast imports of foodstuffs by the Mother Country and aid in the storing of the exportable surpluses of the two Dominions. AMERICAN SUPPLIES.

The United States Government is anxious to help in this scheme, which will fit into a wider policy (to include other parts of the Empire and South America) for building reserves to fill the empty larders of Europe after the war. The* United States will, amongst other undertakings, send supplies to India under the terms of the Indian Purchasing Mission which has just been created. It will supply New Zealand with milk-drying plant to enable New Zealand farmers to dry milk for export, and it will hell) with the scheme for economising shipping by taking Australian produce on its west coast in order to release cast coasc goods for the British Isles. A similar co-ordination of efforts is being operated in the Eastern Hemisphere. The Eastern Group Supply Council, to which India, Burma, NewZealand, South Africa, East Africa and Malaya belong, held its first conference in Delhi in October, 1940. Now it meets regularly to arrange the proper co-ordination of war supplies for tho armies of" Suez. India as the centre of the group is now supplying sandbags to Egypt, textiles to Hong Kong, Malaya, Australia, New Zealand, Tanganyika., Colombo and Burma, yarn for web equipment and khaki material to Australia, and engineering stores to the Middle East.

The Empire's growing industrial strength is turning out an increasing number of ships, aeroplanes, guns, and armoured vehicles. In May not less than 16,500,000 dollars' worth of Canadian-made trucks, automobiles and similar equipment were sent all over the world to strategic points where they could bo used to the best advantage. During the first five months of tliis year 50,000,000 dollars' worth of such vehicles were exported, an increase of 38,000,000 dollars over the same period of the previous year. AIRMEN OF THE EMPIRE.

The Empire air training scheme is an outstanding example of this growing co-operative effort. Canada, Australia and New Zealand have joined with Britain in training 50,000 airmen a year. The main organisation is in Canada, but work is also carried on in Australia and New Zealand. Soutli Africa and Southern Rhodesia under their own schemes are training men from the United Kingdom, Australia and other parts of Africa. The latest news of the progress of this scheme comes this week with the arrival in the United Kingdom of a large group of "cat-eyed" Canadian, Australian and New Zealand airmen specially trained in Canada for night fighting. "" The sterling bloc, to which all the Empire (except Canada, Newfoundland and Hong Kong) belongs, facilitates not onlv the exchange of war materials but also the acquisition of dollars for the purchase of war supplies from the United States. South African gold and Malayan rubber and tin aro Empire commodities which aro needed in the United States and which are providing foliar exchange for the purchase of aircraft. Canada is making Canadian dollars available to the United Kingdom to the amount of our purchases in Canada, which arc estimated at 1,500,000,000 dollars. This rapidly gathering force is plying backwards and forwards across five oceans with ever-increasing speed. It [ will enable us to strike, and strike again, until final victory is achieved. The pace at which its strength is mounting is epitomised in the feat of a bomber ferry pilot who this week broke all records by crossing the Atlantic twice in 24 hours.