PACIFIC SHIPPING

Wairarapa Times-Age, 16 April 1938, Page 7

PACIFIC SHIPPING

LORD CRAIGMYLE DEPLORES POSITION OTHER NATIONS SEIZING OUR HERITAGE PLEA FOR SPEEDY AGREEMENT By Telegraph. —Press Association, Copyright. LONDON, April 14. Lord Craigmyle, who recently resigned the chairmanship of the P. and O. Company, speaking at the launching of the Canton, deplored the Pacific shipping position, saying that no real American interest and certainly no British interest would be served by the disappearance of Empire lines from the seas.

“It is humiliating to maritime traditions and the race to stand by idly while one line after another is wiped out, owing to competition which no private enterprise can survive,” he said. “An abundance of tonnage was carried by Britain through the Great War. Now other nations are seizing our heritage because they have a merchant shipping policy and we have not. Yet is is as important as naval defence. “We won the last war by the skin of our teeth. In the continued neglect of the mercantile marine we are taking a short cut toward losing the next. “I found considerable public surprise in Australia that orders had not been placed for new vessels for the Canadian Australian Line. It is not the fault of the companies concerned nor the British Governments. Nor could anyone have been more helpful than the Australian Prime Minister, Mr J. A. Lyons, in conversations with me in Sydney recently. The Canadian Prime Minister, Mr Mackenzie King, can be trusted not to allow parochial or extraneous influences to affect the future of an Imperial project, and New Zealand has always been in the van of progress. We all hope that no further obstacles will be put up by any of the Governments concerned.

“Increased costs of tonnage have obliged us to seek tenders on revised specifications. Completion of the provisional agreement with the Governments concerned and the prices quoted must govern the decision whether to build, since the vessels must make ends meet.”