DELIVERY SERVICES

Wairarapa Times-Age, 25 May 1942, Page 3

DELIVERY SERVICES

ECONOMIES ESSENTIAL PART OF WAR EFFORT STATEMENT BY MINISTER. COMPULSION IF NECESSARY. (By Telegraph—Press Association.) WELLINGTON, This Day. An indication that, if appeals for the voluntary organisation of deliveries, to effect economies in mart-power, tires and petrol, failed to achieve the desired and needed results, much moie drastic compulsory methods would be resorted to, was given by the Minister of Supply and Munitions, Mr Sullivan, on Saturday. “If I were permitted to speak in figures and in facts as they are known to me, to members of the War Cabinet, and to those associated with tires, raw rubber, petrol, and shipping,” said Mr Sullivan, “every real New Zealander would feel strongly that it was his or her plain national duty to help in making a success of plans to so organise deliveries of commodities, including, of course, milk and bread, that the barest minimum number of tires and gallons of petrol would be consumed in such deliveries. “We have refrained as far as possible from developing hard and inflexible schemes and have asked local communities to work out their own circumstances, provided that they are devised for the purpose of effecting a maximum saving of manpower, tires, and petrol. “In some places the efforts made to organise or eliminate deliveries of milk, bread, and other important commodities have met with opposition, but I would ask all those who exercise their democratic right of criticism to avoid disrupting the national war effort in this vitally important matter, and confine themselves to the more helpful activity of seeking only to improve and perfect any scheme put forward. “These schemes arise out of the absolute needs of the situation that faces us at the moment and are indispensable to our national security, and I ask each individual consumer in the country, for his or her help and forbearance, and his or her acceptance of such limitations on their freedom of choice in service or commodities as may be inherent in the working out of any effective scheme to save manpower, tires, and petrol in the rationing of delivery of commodities.”

Mr Sullivan said his statement had been considered by and had the approval of War Cabinet, which felt that the position was so acute that if present methods failed to achieve the desired and needed results much more drastic compulsory methods must be resorted to.