TRADE MISSION

Otago Daily Times, Issue 25426, 6 January 1944, Page 3

TRADE MISSION

DELEGATION FROM INDIA ARRIVAL IN AUSTRALIA (Rec. 11 p.m.) SYDNEY, Jan. 5. A trade mission from the Eastern Group Supply Council in India is at present visiting Australia, and will leave shortly for New Zealand. The delegation is headed by Mr lan EUiot, chairman of the British Ministry of Supply mission in India, and includes Major-general R. P. Pakenham Walsh, director-general of war provisions in the Eastern Group Supply Council, Mr F. Harrison, a supply and munitions expert of the British Supply Ministry, and Major Sir Thomas Burney, staff officer to Major-general Walsh. Since their arrival in Australia the members of the delegation have had many conferences with military, munitions, and supply officials. Announcing the presence of the mission in Australia, the Commonwealth Minister of Supply, Mr J. Beasley, stressed the importance of co-6peration between this strategic area and Lord Louis Mountbatten’s South-east Asia Command. More than. doing everything possible to exterminate the Japanese in the South-west Pacific, Australia was determined to give all possible material aid to other theatres, of which India was particularly important. Considerable material had already been shipped from Australia to India, the Middle East, Iraq, Persia, and adjacent theatres. Mr Eiliot has paid a high tribute to the Australian industrial war effort, not only for the volume of production achieved, but also particularly for its outstanding quality.