Middle East Supply Centre Conference

Northern Advocate, 17 November 1941, Page 5

Middle East Supply Centre Conference

[British Official Wireless! (Rec. 1.30 p.m.) RUGBY. Nov. IG. Delegates representing Aden, Cyprus, East Africa. Egypt, Lebanon, Palestine, Sudan, Syria, Transjordan and Turkey have attended a three-day meeting in the Middle East supply centre at the British Embassy in Cairo. The meeting was called to decide measures to be taken to ensure essential supplies for countries in the Middle East while making drastic reductions in demands on Allied shipping for nonesseniials. The British Minister in th- Middle East (Mr. Oliver Lyttleton) in addressing the gathering said: “Cut out luxuries and stimulate local production to the utmost. Use only the essentials of existence and cut down the demands for imports in a most drastic manner and reduce the turn round of ships so as not to lose one precious hour in port.” Britain’s Example The Minister pointed out how Britain, by concentrating raw materials, machinery, factory space and skilled labour on most essential work a pel by the strict rationing of food and clothing, had been able to reduce greatly civil imports and devote increased production power to efforts designed to further the prosecution of the war. He said that whenever full use was not made of local powers of production, whenever superfluous crops were produced, and whenever cereals were imported where they could be grown, the hour of victory was postponed. The object of the supply centre was not only to stimulate local production in the Middle East so as to save shipping, but generally to ensure that the countries concerned did not suffer from the'eutting off of normal sources of supply in Europe through Axis invasion and other sources through the concentration of shipping on war supplies. Opposite Methods , In pursuit of this policy steps were being taken to grow more food in the countries concerned. The contrast between the British anxiety to ensure adequate supplies in the countries where Allied forces were operating and the Axis policy of deliberate and merciless plunder in the occupied states had not gone unnoticed in the Middle East, particularly in countries like Syria and Lebanon which recently exchanged Axis penetration for the benefits of co-operation with the British Empire.