WILL WIN WAR

Waikato Times, Volume 125, Issue 20958, 10 November 1939, Page 6

WILL WIN WAR

SOUNDNESS OF ALLIES CONTRAST WITH GERMANY OPINION OF PROFESSOR (Official Wireless) (Received Nov. 10, 3.15 p.m.) RUGBY, Nov. 9 In an interesting address to the Royal Philosophical Society in Glasgow last night, Professor Shirras, former Director of Statistics with the 1 Government of India and Professor oL Economics at Bombay University, surveyed the war potentions of Great Britain and Germany, mainly from the economic viewpoint. Special interest attaches to Professor Shirras’ address in view of the close contact in which he has been ior many years with German economic and financial conditions and the first-hand information he received from the Nazi officials concerned. One of the chief factors which led Professor Shirras to a belief in almost certain victory for the Allies if they managed to hold out for the first three or four months of the war, during which time their national economies could smoothly change over from uncontrolled to controlled organisation, was that Germany, financially and economically, paid the price of war strain long before the outbreak of hostilities, while the Allies, in contrast to the resultant overstrained and already exploited reserve forces in Germany, possessed enormous reserves. Vastly Superior Position Professor Shirras also referred »o 4*e vastly superior credit position of the Allies. Germany, he said, since the last war had been a debtor country, and now possessed minimum gold foreign exchange and foreign investments. Her difficulties in trading had been vastly increased by Britain’s command of the sea. Continuing, Professor Shirras said: “ With controlled economy Britain’s national income could quite well rise from some £4,000,000,000 to some £7,000,000,000, assuming the same proportion to our expenditure as in the last year of the last war. We would be able to increase our expenditure as we got to the maximum war effort to at least £300,000,000 a month. Germany Reached Peak “We should at least be able to denote half the total resources of the community on the prosecution of the war, as we did in the last war. and with the national income increased in real terms by 15 or 20 per cent we might well pay an even higher percentage. Germany, on the other hand, is already at tne peak of her war effort.”