THE OTAGO DAILY TIMES Wednesday, September, 5, 1945. ”THE ECONOMIC DUNKIRK"

Otago Daily Times, Issue 25940, 5 September 1945, Page 4

THE OTAGO DAILY TIMES Wednesday, September, 5, 1945. ”THE ECONOMIC DUNKIRK"

The change from a war economy to a peace economy is productive of perplexity and embarrassment in Great Britain. The country is said to be “ facing an economic Dunkirk.” The implication is obvious. It will require all the resolution, all the determination, all the vigour of the people of which they are capable in order to effect a recovery that will place the nation once again in the position of strength and influence which she occupied before she was called upon, for her own preservation and for that of civilisation, to submit to unparalleled sacrifices during the war years. Nor are they to be released yet from the need to suffer sacrifices. War-time restrictions are still imposed on them without any immediate prospect of their being lifted. As Sir Patrick Duff, High Commissioner for the United Kingdom, said in Wellington yesterday, little increase in amenities is in sight for them. In the common interest, they must continue to stint themselves. From them, moreover, in the words employed in a cable message, a tremendous burst of energy is required for the export trade to supply other nations with goods which they cannot yet afford for themselves in order that the country may pay for its victory. But it takes time for industry to switch back from the production of war material to the task on which it was previously engaged. Although, as Mr Attlee, the Prime Minister, has said in a broadcast this week to the nation, the demobilisation of the forces is being effected so rapidly that an average of 45,000 per week will, in his expectation, be released for the rest of the year, the country is still desperately short of man-power. Under the most favourable conditions, the restoration of labour to industry must be a somewhat tardy process., Nor would it be reasonable to suppose, in circumstances in which shipping is urgently needed for the rehabilitation of soldiers, prisoners of war, and internees, that raw materials can be made speedily available for conversion into the finished products of British manufactories. It is the fact that British industry is not yet geared for peacetime production that made the abrupt close of the lease-lend arrangement with the United States so inconvenient as it has proved. It was inevitable that this plan should come to an end whenever the war was over, but Britain would seem to have been hardly prepared for its being terminated without the receipt of some such notice as might have been expected in the case of the termination of a bargain between business firms. The message in which President Truman has conveyed to Congress an expression of his view that the whole of the debt of the United Nations under the lend-lease scheme should be written off has, in the words of the Manchester Guardian, distinctly improved the atmosphere. It leaves Great Britain, however, in the position that she must provide herself with the finance that will enable her to satisfy her immediate requirements, and the question of the means by which she is to meet her needs now commands attention. One device which has apparently been proposed in the United States is that a loan should be raised there. It is hardly surprising if a plan of this description has been coldly received. The opinion which is expressed by the Economist respecting this suggestion is typically sound. The danger, this paper says, is not that further American assistance will not be forthcoming, but that it will be forthcoming only on terms that will postpone indefinitely the prospect of achieving independence of future assistance. The lend-lease arrangement was of the greatest possible value to Great Britain, but the advantage that was derived from it was not one-sided only, for it was attended with benefits to all the Allied countries and not least of all the United States, for the lack of it would have vastly handicapped that great and wealthy nation in its conduct of the war. And now that lend-lease is at an end, no derogation from it will be involved if Britain should decide that she is not agreeable to limiting her freedom to defend her home markets or build up her future prosperity by the deliberate ■ fostering of interEmpire trade, by mutually beneficial trade treaties, or by conservation and expansion of the sterling area. To the attainment of an aim such as that expressed by Mr Amery, from whom we have just quoted, the Dominion of New Zealand and the other nations of the British Commonwealth should regard it as a privilege and a duty to make their contribution.