NOT BLEEDING TO DEATH

Wairarapa Times-Age, 30 December 1941, Page 7

NOT BLEEDING TO DEATH

GREAT BRITAIN INCREASING PRODUCTION. “It is a great mistake,'in my opinion, for people to make extravagant' statements about Britain bleeding to death,” said Mr W. J. Woodburn, M.P., speaking in the House of Commons. “Britain, instead of bleeding to death, has enormously increased its production, and has risen to the occasion and is producing almost all the material required for the prosecution of the greatest war that has ever occurred. The money question is the shadow, but the material contribution is the substance. Therefore, the question of whether we arc bleeding to death is not one of counters, or of money, but of whether Britain is able to feed her population, and whether that population is able to work and to produce the materials required for ourselves and our Allies, and whether at the end we are going to be so impoverished that we cannot continue to live as we did heretofore. Examining the matter from that point of view, I think some people are much too gloomy. I myself have seen great quantities of some of the finest machinery in the world brought into this country from abroad, and, unless we are very unlucky, it will remain after the war. Our people have not lost their skill. On the, contrary, large numbers of our people have been trained to a degree of skill that was never reached before in our history. Therefore, in view of all the machinery and the material that we have created, except that which has been destroyed in the war, and the skilled personnel that will exist after the war, our capacity for future production will not have been decreased, but enormously increased. Far from having to look forward to a time of poverty and destitution after the war, we can look forward to a great period of development for the benefit of the people.”