INDUSTRIAL BATTLE

Wairarapa Times-Age, 15 December 1939, Page 2

INDUSTRIAL BATTLE

: CAN BE WON BY BRITAIN. — J The more clearly we British antici- ' pate the next development and the 1 nature of the German fundamental plan against the maritime life and industrial energy of Britain, the better shall we be prepared to meet it and beat it. writes Mr J. L. Garvin. In geographical size Britain is but a dot on the planet. Politically she is the pivot of the world. There is such pent up force in this small space here that if we know plainly what is before us and are roused to it, we can win the battle of production out and out. So far we have seen only the preface of the sea-war and the air-war. We have sunk a third or so of the hostile submarines that have been actively employed up to now. We may scout the usual egregious exaggeration of Nazi propaganda when it blares that their dockyards are now working on a scale that will enable them to turn out a submarine a day. Discount this pictorial advertisement to any extent you please. It remains certain that through the months ahead Germany will work night and day in the effort to launch more submarines than we sink. If produced in that quantity the average quality declines as every sailor knows. You cannot create good crews as fast as standardised machines. We shall destroy a higher ratio of the larger swarms. Yet at bottom the fateful issue of war depends. as we said above, on the result of a gigantic duel between two industrial systems.