BRITAIN’S NEW BUYERS

Wanganui Herald, Volume LIII, Issue 160639, 4 May 1920, Page 4

BRITAIN’S NEW BUYERS

THE GREAT STRUGLE FOR PROGRESS.

It is not possible to realise what the workshops of Britain are doing for the rest of the world without going abroad, says Professor Midleton-Smith, M.Sc., in the course of an article in the Daily Mail.

During the last seven and a half years I have been round the world twice. Including various journeys in the Far East I have travelled more than 50,000 miles.

In Siberia (1913) I met a British mining engineer who had been erecting many hundreds of miles from the nearest railway line somewhere in Centre Asia, machinery built in British workshops.

In the United States I found myself interested in a conversation with an engineer in a railway train near Denver. He reminded me that British engineers had built the line which was carrying n« to San Francisco.

A young Chinese hag just visited mo at xny, temporary residence in Kent. Ho been inquiring about machinery for an industrial project in Central China. What 1 saw in Singapore I saw also in Shanghai and Kobe —British ships unloading British machinery. Daring my few months “on leave” in England I have seen many of the men who control the engineering industry. Some of them I knew before tbc war, and I see that they have aged very much indeed aa a result of their efforts to smash the Germans. You cannot work night and day for five years without showing signs of stress and strain. TV pace is nowadays so rapid; there was no time during the war for recreation. Not one of these men who had gone through the dramatic changes of works’ organisation spoke to me about retiring. Their talk was all about development. The old unflagging spirit of Iho race remained.

One managing director surprised dm by making quite a casual statement about the Dutch East Indies. I had spoken of the recent remarkable economic development of Malays and of the vast natural resources of the chain of islands which stretch from Singapore to Australia.

‘We have orders on our books worth at least .£IOO,OOO for the Dutch East Indies,” he said. The works where those machines are being made, or will be made, are in Manchester. There will be some hundreds' of units, not one concentrated plant such as a giant turbo-alter-nator.

At the present time there are orders for British workshops from Europe because of the devastation wrought bv the war. But the Europe of to-day is a Europe panting with "exhaustion. The mineral resources of Russia and other parts of Europe can no longer be counted upon.

Asia, the dazzling East, which attracted the Elizabethiau adventurers, is awakening, and is offering us a market) and raw materials. Not the Asia of the nineteenth century, which demanded only cotton goods from Lancashire; it. is the Asia of to-day and of to-morrow; the productive, the industrial Asia that by reason of Anglo-Saxon teaching, is rousing itself from the inertia of ages. It is an Asia that, each year, is absorbing millions of pounds’ worth of British machinery. But we are only on the fringe of the market.

The orders for the workshops of Britain are coming in from the countries which have learnt to develop their own natural resources. We of the AngloSaxon race have taught them the new ideas. We have given them a great ■gift, a knowledge of the world in which they live. Like charity, such knowledge bestows blessings on those who give and on those who receive.

“Are you not afraid of the industrial competition of Asia?’’ some of my friends asked me. Emphatically “No." The engineering workshops of Asia today actually create work for the workof the Midlands and Lancashire, They cannot compete nationally, although they may do so in certain trades. They never will compete unless the old characteristics of our race change entirely. For the British were the pioneers, andi still are the pioneers of scientific discovery and engineering development. r The role of Britain is not to remain stationary, not to whine because other countries also accept her national ideals Rather is it to lead in the great' struggle for progress. There are no signs ot any lack of courage or pagination among scientific workers organic* of industry in England.