il portunities for good or for |All over the world the ex- gencies of war, blockade, jack e£ shipping, Lend-Lease agree- fents and purchasing policies mall have dug new channels of aicade and cut new patterns of “#eographical specialisation, ‘@ritish trade relations with Biany parts of the world will fave greatly changed. The ®olution to the question which = these changes are to prove Mermanent, which are to have : een only “for the duration,” ij i; bound in the last resort to e@ with the traders, for in the ' fue run the practical business “ian should always be capable — outpacing the theorist. British commerce, we must ear in mind, was founded by ‘rivate enterprise in a pre- zonoemic age. It could not an- Cipate history and apply later zience to contemporary devel- “@oment. Some of its methods ere necessarily empirical and faperficial, but it was success il because it was flexible and dapted itself readily to suc- @essive changes in its enyiron- lent. © We are going to need this exibility more than ever in ve confused period before us hen the problems of peace nd the problems of war are ®@iextricably intertwined — the Poly period of reconstruction re are likely to get—and one @£ our most vital opportunities @5r its use will be in our com- fPiercial relations with our reat. Ally, Soviet Russia. s S'HE- introduction of Russia’s population of some i190 fiillion to the 500 million of the Liritish Empire has =een Fchieved in wartime; the ac- aaintance must vipen into Mendship in peace. During the war, as we know, em@ae USSR has had unprece- ented opportunities of sampl- ag the resources of Britain nd of the Empire in the way # strategic raw materials, and f a vast range of manuiac- ures. It may be well to remind our- elves what some of the de iveries have been—shipments s8£ raw materials up to April 0, 1944, included 103,508 tons mf rubber, 35,400 tons of alum- Seinium, 33,400 tons of copper, #9 '9,400 tons of tin, 47,700 tons * f lead, 7,400 tons of zinc, E (700 tons of nickel, 245 tons “Pf cobalt, 93,000 tons of jute and sisal, and articles made herefrom: 6,491 metal-cutting athes, assorted jndusitrial ‘Pquipment to a value of *14,- 100,000, including power gen rating equipment with a total Peapacity of 374,000 kilowatts, 5,084 electric motors, 104 pow- sx hammers and presses, 24 arbour cranes, and industrial Viiamonds to a value of £1,206,- )00. Im addition, 138,200 tons z x€ foodstuffs were delivered @ More significant than the sheer production effort for Britain over the last four years Aas been the - qualitative su- deriority achieved. This wat s i ia @ has been a war of ideas in : every sense, political, strategi- Pecal and technical. Im every bearer of historic opportunities. his war, the victors, will be faced with greater Op- Sipe. Tt can certainly be ill than any nation or group of nations in history. field Britain has won a decisive victory, and it is on these Iines that our effort must continue. Quality has always been our Strongest suit. We shall not be judged pri- mInarily by the magnitude of our Contribution but by the bril- liance and frequency of our in- vention, and by the integrity of our aims. Some of the very latest dos electrical ~ velopments of our’ industry have already been em- bodied in the piant sent to the USR. The equipment supplied included, for example, the lare- est transformers in the world, a complete 12,000 kilowatt pewer station built to Russian Specifications, and farm ma- chinery among which was an electric motor for water pump- ing, hoisting, elevating and the driving of root-cutting and food-mininge machines. Tt'may be well to recall some of the main features of Brit- ish-Soviet trade in the pre-war years. In 1988, for example, Qut of a total of £6.400.000 di- rect exports, £8,.350,000 con- sisted of machinery and ma- chine tools, £1,300,000 non-fer- reus metals and £500,000 wool. Of a total of £11,000,000 cover- ing re-exports, no less than £7.800,000 was for non-ferrous metals, £1:000,000 for raw rub- ber and £1,000,000 for wool. In that year exports and re-ex- ports were fairly balanced by imports of grain, timber, furs and oil. It is reasonable to sup- pose that the postwar struc- ture of the trade will not be substantially different. — It may be, however, that the method of trading will under- go considerable modification. In the past, export credits were of the highest importance in British-Soviet relations. The advantage then lay with the Russians, who generally had a considerable export surplus in their favor. IT do not know whether it will be United Kingdom policy to resume the policy of long- term credit. If not, this would at first sight appear to place our traders at a disadvantage with their American rivals, whose plans for large-scale credits, allegedly running into tens of billions. of dollars dur- ing the next ten to twenty years, have recently been the subject of much uninformed conjecture. @ RIG Johnstone, the President of the U.S. Chamber of Gommerce, whose recent visit to Marshal Stalin has been widely publicised, « estimated Russia’s requirements at 20 billion dol- lars for the first decade, naming new food, dehydration plant, rails, locomotives and heavy ma- chinery as the major items which America might be called upon to supply. He added, how- ever, that in his opinion the British were quite capable of working out their own salva- tion vis-a-vis the USSR. Some of the reasons for this opinion are not dificult to recognize. The USSR has al- ways been a believer in multi- lateral trade. The prices of her own manufactured goods under normal conditions have been and, for some time at least, are likely to remain far above world parity. It is therefore clear that her imports of ne- cessaries will have to be bal- anced by selective exports. Britain’s ability to absorb the types. of raw material which Russia will be eple to export is likely to be greater than that of the USA, which is, for ~ example, a leading producer of timber and ferro-alloys. The saying “Markets are people, but sgooa markets are people with money” is strictly true only in so far as the people with money or itS equiva- lent’ are in need of the goods _ you have to offer. There will be ample room for both Britain and America in Russia’s postwar trade if both can retain the confidence and win the friendship of this FFI fork _P.A. Features, December 16 — Page 13 young and abundantly vigor- ous giant. It is always. salutary to remember that . Rome, a grand example of a State versed in the expedients of finance and commerce, died because she did not and could not know that economics to be real and wholesome must before all else consider men and their needs. Anthony. Elden once said that the les- son of the twentieth century “is the utter inter-depend- ence of nations.” It is cer- tainly true that neither great nations nor smail will find it Satisfactory to live in uneasy separateness in tke shadow of the aeroplane. If our trade policy is to be realistic it must recognize the co-existence and co-par- ticipation in world trade of both “liberal” and “planned” economics. We must recognize that much of the wartime mechanism for the control of foreign trade will have to be maintained and that the actions of individual governments are bound to ef- fect the economy and the policy of others. The co-ordination of By Jules Maris - which is h-Soviet Trade = By Sir Francis Joseph, B.T., K.B.E. @ HAS been said that war is the : said that at the conclusion Olt national commercial] policies is inevitable but in our lifetime, at least, the world’s markets are likely to be unlimited. The USSR’s substantial self-suf ficieney is still lacking in cer- tain vital materials which we ean supply against commodities in which she is abundantly rich. There will undoubtedly be a period durinse which imports of machine tools and capital equip- ment can be of inestimable bene- fit to Russia in facilitating her stupendous task of reconstruc- ‘tion and in minimizing the post- ponement of the expansion of her consumption industries. Our own heavy industries can- not fail to benefit by this par- tial absorption of surplus ca- pacity. The war has revealed the untold possibilities of Russia’s planned industrialization and her newly acquired aptitudes for mechanized civilization. In peace, I'am convinced, she will onee more astonish the world by her recuperative capacity, and it is in our interest no less than in our power to lighten this hereulean task by the “drudgvery-saving mechanism international trade.” ar Industry i LYON factory furnaces are roaring, sending gusts of smoke and sparks issuing from their tall chimneys like the reflections of a battle... . 110 mm. guns are piling up in the factory yards; they are not yet complete and assembled, but already threatening. They were ordered during the occupation for use in Rou- mania. The reason why they were so long in the making was that the workers were sabo- taginge and ca*’cannying. When the liberation came, electricity broke down and work had to stop. Today they are being mass-produced, still slowly, but surely now. To-morrow they will be in use on the western front. An industrial town in the centre of France was liberated on August 18. Next day the workers were urgently called back to the armament factory, they came hurrying, somewhat surprised, with their FFI -arm- bands still on, and their ma- chine guns still clasped in their hands. Young FFI officers oc- cupied the workrooms, . gave the orders, found out what raw materials there were, what ma- chinery and tools. It was vital that arms should be found for the young army of Maquis men and other vol- unteers so -that they might con- tinue the fight for liberation. Columns of lorries were sent out to get. steel and copper from distant towns. The workers offered to do a 60- hour weelk on a 24-hour system. Today several thous- ands of sub-machine guns have already been turned out and sent to the soldiers serving De- lattre de Taesigny. The same activity goes on in a neighboring town. Rifles and heavy guns are being turn- ed out, and a series of 81 mm: mortars is being delivered> The FEI were without arms, which will be produced by French war factories. An ammunition fac- shift - tory in this town has also awakened from the slumbering regime which it cultivated un- der the ocupation. When it at- stempted to start intensive pro- duction, no explosives were available. Was that going to hold them up? ... They solved the matter by sending lorries to get supplies from Toulouse. In the Loire, another factory needed spare parts to complete the heavy guns which they had manufactured; the FFI went post haste to get the necessary supplies from Chatellerault. They revolutionized artillery parks and upset all> the set habits of then well-meaning: police. Very often they “were asked if they had orders from the Minister entitling them to to supplies. “What Minister ? The one, you mean, who has taken-to his heels? The new ‘one would approve what we do —if he knew—don’t worry!” Whatever obstacles were put in their path, whatever objec- tions raised by expostulating officials, the young FFI got their way. And so today num- erous factories are turning out machine-suns which they have they shall have arms which no written right to be making, but which have proved them- selves excellent light and pre- cise weapons. They are the 36 mm. The FFI were shoeless. Ro- mans are making them shoes. In: Lyon, factories are weaving cloth to make them oyercoats and blankets. Im workshops their uniforms are being cut out and made up. Raw materi- als are Jacking, but the FRI unearth reseryes about which the Ministry of Industrial Pro- duction and the police know nothing. Military stocks, care- fully hidden away in 1940, have been brought to light and dis- tributed. ; The other day an FFI quart- ermaster from Britanny arriv- ed in Lyon at the head of a column of empty lorries. He wanted 10,000 pairs of trous- ers, 15,000 jerseys and 10,000 pairs of socks for his shivering volunteers. The Red Cross, which has stocks of these gar- ments would not release any because theirs are all’ needed for French prisoners. “You want 10,000 pairs? Here they are,” said the Lyon FFI commander, and he pro- duced all that were required, handing them over with the compliments of the Alps divi- sion to the Atlantic front di- vision. “But all this is most irregular,” would. murmur the piping voice of a moth-eaten official with a mind befogged by _napthaline, “those stocks are meant for the Myon re- gion, .. .’ “The FFT are fight- ing a war. They are fichtine it on every front!” The new young Army which is busy organizing its own war industry in the midst of the debris and disorder left by the enemy, ‘is also finding and training its own officers. Train- ing colleges have been opened, and are attended by men of every calling and profession, all anxious to achieve the same purpose. Better still, the French Army and the FFI are each day merging more suc- cessfully. The military H.Q. of one region are being shared with the FEI local General Staff, and the result is per- fectly harmonious planning.