GREAT EFFORT

Wairarapa Times-Age, 28 January 1943, Page 4

GREAT EFFORT

BY AUSTRALIA & NEW ZEALAND IN SUPPLYING AMERICAN REQUIREMENTS. ACKNOWLEDGED BY LEND-LEASE ADMINISTRATOR. (British Official Wireless.) RUGBY, January 25. New Zealand, a country with a population of less than two millions, has provided almost a million and a half dozen eggs, over two million pounds of butter, three million pounds of sugar, sixteen million pounds of beef, mutton and pork, said Mr. E. Stettinius, United States Lend-Lease Administrator, in a comprehensive review of reciprocal lend-lease aid to the United States by Britain, her Dominions and Colonies and the Allied nations. He disclosed that supplies received by the United States forces in the South and South-west Pacific areas from Australia and New Zealand already included over 200 million pounds of food. In consequence of this, the United States was sending practically no food to its forces in these areas, but was using shipping space for tanks and guns instead. /br such aid there was no possible yardstick, either quantitative or financial, just as we could not measure by ■feet or dollars the value of lives sacrificed to defeat the Axis. Yet this pooling of brains and resources might well prove equal in importance to the pooling of weapons in shortening the war. Mr. Stettinius said that supplies of food already furnished to the United States had resulted in serious civilian shortages both in Australia and New Zealand of meat, dairy products, eggs, vegetables and canned goods. In addition, both New Zealand and Australia had undertaken a large-scale expansion of farm production to grow more of the foods American troops need. They were also expanding their food processing industry to provide more canned and dehydrated food rations for the United States forces in the Solomons, New Guinea, New Caledonia and the New Hebrides. Both countries again had devoted a large part of their construction industry to building airfields, barracks, depots, repair plants, roads and many other facilities for American forces. New Zealand was also furnishing blankets and clothing to American troops and had a programme in progress for the manufacture of half a million pairs of army shoes. In addition to the building of naval and air bases, facilities, barracks and depots, New Zealand had built two large new hospitals for American troops and diverted so ' many medical supplies to the use of American troops in the Solomons that for the time such common items as gauze, bandages and surgical cotton were virtually unobtainable for civilian use.