JAPAN’S WAR STOCKS

Timaru Herald, Volume CL, Issue 22064, 10 September 1941, Page 5

JAPAN’S WAR STOCKS

Position Should Not Be Underestimated British Official Wireless (Rec. 8.30 p.m.) RUGBY, Sept. 8. A warning against underestimating Japan’s economic position and

misunderstanding the increasing shortage of commodities offered for consumption is given in the current issue of the "Economist.”

Supplies, it is stated, are large enough to cover Japanese wartime requirements for periods ranging in various goods from six to 15 months. It is estlm-ted that they will permit Japan, while continuing the war with China, to face the Anglo-American trade embargo for about a year *or allow her to fight a southward blitzkrieg for some six months. Germany’s attack on Russia was not foreseen in Toklo and the new situation thereby created led the Japanese fighting services to demand an urgent further increase of war stocks so as to enable them to face, besides the continuation of the China war and the AngloSaxon embargo or southern blitzkrieg, aggressive action against Russia in case it should collapse before the German onslaught. After Japan’s adherence to the Tripartite Pact was complete the apparatus of German financed economic and technical advisers was imported and superimposed by the Tokio War Office upon the whole of Japan’s finance and economy. This apparatus of the German advisers was chiefly responsible for the huge accumulation of war stocks. These Germans w' e also responsible for the increasing difficulties of current industrial production and the increase in the supply of commodities for civilian consumption in Japan. The accumulation in Japan of lar;e additional stocks of war supplies was acomplished first through the systematic economising of war and other tpaterials origin lly earmarked for use ip China. Secondly, by the continued tightening up during the last 12 months of Japan's foreign trade and foreign exchange controls and reducing exports to the minimum required by foreign exchange needs. And thirdly by a further curtailment of qivilian consumption all along the line.

t The writer adds that influential

Japanese military and naval leaders have recently become critical and plainly are paying attention to the suggestion of private big business that production should be encouraged by the old standard methods of increasing prices and allowing higher private profits on-‘ war and related materials, rv.cgcintheonfie (r