Wairarapa Times-Age WEDNESDAY, JULY 22, 1942. PRODUCTION AND STRIKING POWER.

Wairarapa Times-Age, 22 July 1942, Page 2

Wairarapa Times-Age WEDNESDAY, JULY 22, 1942. PRODUCTION AND STRIKING POWER.

e (WTICS of British war production, according to a cablegram V which purported a day or two ago to indicate the trend of opinion in London, have been impresesd by the statements made recently by Mr Lyttelton and Sir Andrew Duncan—statements which have shown “that the goal of quantity has been reached. It is impressive, it was added, “that Britain, a country ot 47,000,000 people, has equalled this year the output of the whole of German Europe.” For what they are worth, and presumably they are worth a great deal, these claims must be regarded as running definitely counter to the idea that Britain meantime is incapable of extending her Avar effort into new fields —that she must be content, as the northern summer runs its course, to maintain her supply of Avar material to Russia and the flow of reinforcements and material to the Egyptian battle area, on which the thoughts of so many people in this country are concentrated at present, and other Middle Eastern and Eastern areas. Difficulty in believing that Britain’s present war effort, mighty as it is, represents all. that she can do in this tremendously critical year, is made greater when account is taken of the immense and increasing contribution the United States is doav making to the fighting' strength of the free nations., No precise details have been made public, for instance, of. the strength of the American forces transported across the Atlantic, but newspapers in the United States spoke freely not long ago of a single great convoy having added tens of thousands of American soldiers, formidably equipped, to the numerous forces which had preceded them. A very wide and varied range of possibility of course is open as to the lines on which Allied offensiA’e action may de-, velop, but it is of some interest, at a time when life and death battles are being fought at odds in Russia and in Egypt, to note that in recent days it has been assumed freely in the United States that the, plans of the Allies are laid for a great extension of military effort this year. Writing in the “Christian Science Monitor” two months ago, Mr Roscoe Drummond observed that the United States War Production Board had just taken one of its most significant actions since America’s entry into the war. It had substantially curbed the construction of new plant facilities in order to increase substantially the immediate production of ships, planes and munitions. It was at about the same time that Mr Donald Nelson, chairman of the American War Production Board, said: “It Avill do no good to turn out a flood of munitions a year from now if we don’t have the equipment'for emergencies this year.” Quoting statements which had then recently been made by President Roosevelt, Mr Churchill, the United States Secretary for War (Mr Stimson) and others, Mr Drummond claimed that these statements all added up to one conclusion. That conclusion, he said, was: — That the tempo of the Avar is quickening fast, very fast; that a crescendo offensive by the enemy has got to be expected momentarily; that decisive action —which though it may not end the Avar this year may assure winning it —is now within the grasp of the Allies. The facts suggested, Mr Drummond further argued, that the United Nations have decided to assume the calculated risk of meeting offense Avith offense in 1942 instead of meeting it with defense, as first planned. This view of the Avar outlook and of the development of Allied policy may or may not be justified. It is at all events not obviously invalidated by anything that has happened in the last month or two. Rather the contrary.