WAR PRODUCTION

Wairarapa Times-Age, 1 September 1941, Page 5

WAR PRODUCTION

GREAT INCREASE STILL DEMANDED MR EDEN ON GROWING NEEDS THE PROBLEM OF SUPPLYING RUSSIA. CONDITIONS OF FUTURE PEACE & STABILITY. (British Official Wireless.) RUGBY, August 30. Speaking in Coventry today the Foreign Secretary, Air Eden, dealt with the question of production, which he declared was still the key to victory. The output of war material by the Allied and associated Powers, including the United States contribution, still fell far short of our needs, he said. Those needs would grow as the tide of war swept wider until it engulfed the world. Referring to Russia, Mr Eden said the Soviet forces were fighting with magnificent courage and necessarily using up huge quantities of munitions. We now had a greater call to meet. We had to help supply Russia’s needs as well as our own. It was quantity of machines which had won all the battles of this war. LESSON OF RECENT PAST. “To be short of materials in war is the most costly method of waging war not only in life but also in material,” he said. “Had we and our French and Belgian Allies possessed in France last summer the armoured units and the air support the German armies enjoyed Germany might today be fighting a land war on two fronts. Our losses of equipment in France left us here last year with the cupboard almost empty. You worked unsparingly to fill it. And then, out of our still perilously scant resources, we sent to General Sir Archibald Wavell in the autumn the tanks, guns and aeroplanes of which he and his commanders and men made such brilliant use last winter.” We needed war materials in all parts of the world, declared Mr Eden. Only this week it had been necessary to take action against German machinations in a new area —Iran. Mr Eden referred to the agreements recently concluded between Poland and Russia, which restored the relations between the two countries and provided for the formation of a Polish army on Russian soil, and between Russia and Turkey guaranteeing the territorial integrity of the latter in the event of her being attacked. ‘•These two acts by the Soviet Government,” he said, “were warmly welcomed by us because both Poland and Turkey stand in special relationship to ourselves. We have treaties of mutual assistance with both.” CHOICE BEFORE EUROPE. The Roosevelt-Churchill declaration, continued Mr Eden, was more than another nail in Nazism’s coffin. It was a declaration that we, too, had our plans for peace as well as a strategy for war. Europe, including Germany, knows now the choice before it Hitler's new order or ours. Referring to his recent statement that after the war Germany must be placed in a condition in which it would be impossible for her again to rearm and resume the struggle for world domination, and on the other hand in conditions which would prevent hei economic collapse, Mr Eden said: “Today I would go a step further. These two fundamental principles must govern not only our relations with Germany after the war but all our international relations. This is the plain meaning of the RooseveltChurchill declaration. No nation must ever be in a position to wage aggressive war against her neighbours. “Secondly, economic relations must be so regulated that no nation can in future be starved out of its proper economic position by autocratic methods of trade arbitrarily imposed. One fallacy we have learned since 1918 is that of the idea then possessed by many that when the war was over they could sit back and all would be well. We know better now. We know we must be as alert and watchful to win the peace as we need to be vigorous and persistent to win the war.”