AMERICAN NATION

Wairarapa Times-Age, 20 August 1942, Page 4

AMERICAN NATION

DEDICATED TO TOTAL WAR BROADCAST BY MR NASH. PRESENT & FUTURE PROBLEMS. (British Official Wireless.) RUGBY. August 18. The New Zealand Minister to Washington, Mr Nash, gave British listeners in a broadcast tonight a "message of hope and encouragement for the future.” Describing Pearl Harbour as marking the end of one era of American history and the beginning of another, Mr Nash said that American industry, attitudes, habits, and way of life had all undergone a remarkabdle transformation. Formerly wedded to ways of peace, the American people had become a nation dedicated to the ends of total war, and determined to get- ihe job over as quickly as possible.

The battle of production had been won, but, given the arms and equipment and the men to use them, it was still essential to have the means of transporting them, Mr Nash said. “Shipping, therefore, is the most urgent of the many vital problems confronting the United Nations, and unless we can solve the problem the chances are that the tremendous production effort which the United States particularly is putting forth will be largely neutralised. The shipyards of Britain and America are performing miracles of construction, but the hour is late and the need is great.

“By our capacity to build the ships and keep them afloat to carry war material and reinforcements on an ever-increasing scale to Russia, the Pacific, the Middle East and China, the final outcome of this conflict may be decided.”

Mr Nash stressed the “fullest and fairest consideration,” which New Zealand’s own needs and those of the Pacific territories which she had undertaken to protect had at all times received. Yet, while the loss of the last remaining bases of future offensive action in the south-west Pacific would mean a disastrous and even fatal setback to the United Nation’s strategy, he and the New Zealand people were equally convinced that their future safety was no less vitally dependent on Russia’s capacity for continued resistance in Europe, on the ability of the Allies to hold Egypt and destroy Rommel, on the success with which China would maintain the fight, and on the future role of India, on the outcome of the effort to meet the submarine menace in the Atlantic, and, above all, on the continuing security of Britain herself. “We must, therefore,” he said, “prepare for any and every eventuality, and serve where the need is greatest’. In the Pacific our first immediate objective must be supremacy in the air and on the sea.” Finally, Mr Nash appealed for a transformation of the United Nations into a symbol of real and vital unity, and suggested the setting up now of a world reconstruction council for mapping out a positive programme for carrying on a world of peace. The council should have subsidiary, councils organised on a regional basis, and the job of these would be to spread the right materials in the right place, “to readjust stock positions, to deal with the problem of surpluses after the war, to arrange for a continuance of world lease-lend procedure that will enable plant and equipment; and raw materials to be transferred to the countries where the need is greates , and generally to see commodities and production facilities made available according to the capacity to produce cn the one hand and the relative need on the other.”