Clipped Wings

New Zealand Listener, Volume 16, Issue 396, 24 January 1947, Page 5

Clipped Wings

E regret having to appear this week with our wings clipped to three columns. Although the war is over the consequences remain, and one of them is a disrupted newspaper industry which may or may not be fully restored in five years. One trouble is the fact that the situation which cuts off supplies of newsprint greatly increases the demand for newspapers. Britain, for example, consumed about 114 million tons of newsprint in 1938, But the intense interest in war news during the next six or seven years lifted the circulation of the newspapers so rapidly that the demand to-day is 2,000,000 tons, which is vastly more than the industry can supply. British newspapers have in fact reconciled themselves to a fiveyear plan under which the pre-war size will be reached about 1950; so New Zealand so far has been lucky. But it will surprise some of our readers to know that another factor in the problem was a crought last summer in Newfoundland. Newfoundland is not our only source of supply in New Zealand, but it is a very important source, and it is not exactly amusing to learn now that the meteorological conditions which gave us our mild 1946 winter gave Canada sucha dry summer that the waterways could not be used for transporting’ timber to the mills. At present they can’t be used because they are closed by ‘ice, and it will therefore be some months yet before supplies are on the move again in the normal way. So the world is one after all. A dry wind blows in Newfoundland and a column disappears from the pages of The New Zealand Listener. It will come back as soon as we can make it grow; but the world’s production is only about 6% million tons, and three-quarters of this is consumed in the United States. All.we can do at present is play with figures and pray that the people of Newfoundland, God bless them, will get no sunburn next summer.