SUPREME EFFORT

Wairarapa Times-Age, 1 March 1940, Page 5

SUPREME EFFORT

DEMANDED OF BRITISH FARMERS PRODUCTION OF FOODSTUFFS. CROPS TO BE HARVESTED. (British Official Wireless.) RUGBY, February 28. The importance of agriculture in the national war effort teas stressed by both Mr Chamberlain and Mr Lloyd George in speeches today. The Prime Minister was addressing a gathering of agricultural representatives in connection with the Government ’s campaign for ploughing 2,000,000 extra acres, and he urged farmers to make a supreme effort, tiespite the delays imposed earlier in the year by adverse weather, to bring the campaign to a successful conclusion. He gave an assurance that the War Cabinet was behind the farmers and intended to see the necessary steps taken so that crops would be harvested. In the opinion of the Government, he said, the issue of the war depended just as much on the production of more food as on the more conspicuous exploits of the fighting men of the sea, air and land forces. Stressing the need to produce more food at home so as to leave shipping space at a time when the country was being turned into a great armament workshop needing quantities of raw materials, he referred to enemy action and said that British shipping losses, although substantial, bore only a trifling proportion to the whole volume of shipping. The convoy system, under which they were bringing safely to United Kingdom ports not only British ships but neutrals, necessarily slowed down the rate at which they could make round voayges, and that represented a certain loss in the total capacity which they must compensate by cutting many peace-time imports. Mr Lloyd George in a speech at a luncheon organised by the National Defence Public Interest Committee, urged greater home production of foodstuffs. After pointing out the advantage a democracy had over a totalitarian country in the matter of constructive criticism, he said: On at least one vital front, in my judgment, we are not fully prepared, and that is food supplies.” In the last war Gei - many overlooked the vital importance of food supplies, with the result that she was starved to surrender. Regarding the war, Mr Lloyd George said: "Out cause is just. We are fighting for international right.”