Anglo-Saxon World Could Replace Lost Industries

Northern Advocate, 7 October 1941, Page 3

Anglo-Saxon World Could Replace Lost Industries

LONDON, October 6. The possibilities of Britain and the United States giving industrial help to Russia are discussed In “The Economist,” which shows how, even if the Russians lose the Leningrad-Moscow-Ukraine industrial front, with over 60 per cent, of the total industrial capacity of the Soviet, Britain and the United States would be able to supply weapons, machine tools and special steel, without which the Ural and Siberian industrial regions could not carry on. Asiatic Russia is still extremely dependent on the older industrial regions of European Russia, which supply two-thirds of the machinery required in the Urals, while, in spite of an increasing steel output, general purpose steel, rails, heavy girders and other categories have to be imported largely from the Ukraine. From Urals, Siberia Nevertheless, the Ural region now produces one-fifth of the union's iron, and one-quarter of the steel, while at Sverdlovsk, Novotagil and Chelyabinsk there are plants producing all types of machinery and machine tools. According to the 1942 programme, over 35' per cent, of the union's output of pig iron, steel and rolled metal is to come from the Urals and Siberia. These figures illustrate Russia’s ability to continue the struggle if the European areas were lost. Lord Beaverbrook and Mr. Harriman have promised that all Russian needs will be met from the older industrial systems of Britain and the United States, which, if the worst comes to the worst, can, according to “The Economist,’ take the place of European Russia in keeping Asiatic Russia going.