The Stratford Evening Post WITH WHICH IS INCORPORATED THE EGMONT SETTLER THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 30, 1916. AFTER WAR PROBLEMS.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXII, Issue 5, 30 November 1916, Page 4

The Stratford Evening Post WITH WHICH IS INCORPORATED THE EGMONT SETTLER THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 30, 1916. AFTER WAR PROBLEMS.

It is now, very fully realised that when this horrible war is won ' and the curse of German militarism and brutality, is crushed finally, there is ahead of Britain and her daughter States a great task to meet the trade competition of not only the enemy countries but certain Neutral States which will be used as the channels through which German goods will endeavour to flow. Whether we shall ho able to carry out successfully this great after-war work remains to be seen, but at least some idea of what it is possible to achieve is given in a review of what has been accomplished since the outbreak of the war. British industry under the pressure of war, says a writer in the London Daily Chronicle, has demonstrated that it is capable of producing infinitely more national wealth than anyone imagined to he possible in times of peace. If anything like the war rate of production can he maintained when the war. is over, it will not take us many years to recover from the war wastage, and we shall be better off than in the old go-as-you-please days. A few iigures will indicate both how the army requirements have grown and what the nation is capable of doing when it 's put on its mettle. On an average «i the first two years of the war the army has demanded forty times more woollen and worsted cloth than in the average peace year, thirty-seven times more flannel, twenty-seven times

more tent duck, ' ninety-five times more cotton materials other than Lent thick. Rome eighty limes as

many service dress suits ami greatcoats have been demanded as in peace years, over 2000 miles of wire rope has been ordered, nearly WO miles of canyas and rubber hose, and so forth. The nation has made a gigantic war effort, and at home txr, in the field-it has achieved in a given time what lias never been 'done before in the history of the world. In three of the principal textile industries, wool, flax, and jute, the Army Con-

tracts Department now purchases the raw material direct, and thus is enabled to control the prices charged by' manufacturers. As in the ease of a' large number of War Office contracts,' these prices are based on actual costings with a reasonable margin of profit. ' The Army Contracts Depart-' ment is now the sole purchaser for! England or Russian flax, and the benefits to the flax industry from the action of the War Office in prevent-

ing speculation and obtaining a steady and sufficient supply of raw material

arc so obvious that the Government; is now being urged to continue buying. during tin; coming season, the latest example being the purchases of tlie colonial wool clips. Why should I not organisation for the Empire's welfare be continu ed after the war on lines similar to those which have proved so successful in the strenuous times we are passing through ? Sir L. Chiozza Money reviewing the trade outlook: recently, and referring to the building up of United States industry with British gold, stated the postition very frankly when he said: "We must redress the natural deficiencies of the United Kingdom—and they are many—by fully developing the resources of the British 'Empire, which are great. We must not allow the illusion of resistance to make us regard in the future as we have in the past, the British Dominions beyond the seas as divorced for us in an economic sense. If we care to make' the most of the British Empire and of its materials we can easily hold our own against the strongest of our competitors. If, on the other hand, we continne after the war to practise small-scale output by small competitive firms, more occupied with taking business away from each other than | with scientific production, we shall fail to hold our own against a competitor whoso resources are so enormously greater than those possesed by the United Kingdom."