Last month a full report of the Committee appointed to study the problem of raw. materials was published in Geneva. The outstanding finding of the Committee was that most raw materials were produced wholly, or to a great extent, in non-colonial countries, the exceptions being Palm*Oil, Rubber and Copra. Thus the Colonies of various powers actually supply no more than*about 3 per cent, of the world's production of commercially important raw materials. The difficulties of procuring raw qnaterials have been aggravated by heavy expenditure on armaments, There is a definite relationship between the growth of population and the need for raw materials. The population of certain countries has increased rapidly and immigration has been stopped. Thus the access of raw materials for their industries is of first-class "importance and some of them consider that this situation compels them to quote excessively high prices for their requirements. The basic difficulty, however, is in the dislocation of the exchanges. The restoration of international exchanges on the widest basis would afford the only general and permanent solution of commercial access. It is noteworthy that in recent speeches Herr Hitler has agreed that the economic aspect of Germany's case for the return of her colonies is not as important as the political consideration of the prestige attaching to colonial possessions.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.