BRITISH PROBLEM

Dominion, Volume 37, Issue 230, 26 June 1944, Page 5

BRITISH PROBLEM

Fulfilment Of Pledge Against Japan

LONDON, June 23. “We have pledged, and it is no hollow pledge, to bring the full impact of Britain to bear against Japan, but in fulfilling that pledge there are certain logistic difficulties which have to be overcome,” said Captain O. Lyttelton, the Minister of Production, when replying to the unemployment debate in the House of Commons. “Distances are so great and base facilities so inadequate that it is impossible to employ against Japan the whole of the forces we now have mobilized. “In the past six months we have been examining the extended industrial mobilization necessary to support the armed forces which the 1 services say they could bring to bear agaiust Japan. I canuot be precise. I can only say that more of the resources will be required for the war against Japan than will be released. “It will be the duty .of the Ministries of Production and Supply to see that absolute priority is given to production for waging war against Japan. _ It will be the duty of the munitions industry, and of these Ministries also, to release factories for civilian production in places which will ease the Minister of Labour's task and in places which will give such production as the I J resident of the Board of Trade wants.”

Captain Lyttelton said he could not be precise because of these unknown factors, and it was intended within the next few weeks to tell individual companies that they should plan on this pro forma basis, but that they must not blame the Government if events made the forecast inaccurate.

Referring to the subject of creditor and debtor nations, Captain Lyttelton said: “We, in the whole of our industrial life, have always been a creditor nation. We shall end this war as the world’s largest debtor nation.

“It is impossible to carry on in a debtor position with a creditor's mentality. Gone are the days when the Lady Bountiful could toss an odd £10,000.006 to a poor republic, not minding if it could not lie repaid. “We have to harness all our national resources. Wo must make, by the skill of our workers, those things which we cannot pay for by export. "I am optimistic enough to believe that the power of the modern industrial State is so recuperative that we enn once again be rich and prosperous, and perhaps solve the unemployment problems which have so often eluded us.”