India's present industrial activity, ver, i5 by no means limited to staple products and munitions. Large quantities of Army boots are being made, and one order to the value of £750,000 for the United Kingdom has called for an output of 125,000 pairs a month. Here it is of interest to note that with the object of safeguarding against, any shortage in wattle bark, which is largely used by the Indian tanning industry, a reserve of 7,500 tons of this material has been purchased by the Supply Department of the Government of India from the South African Wattle Bark Growers' Association. India is also making electric bulbs from im-Sorted parts, paints and varnishes from imported materials, cast-it piping, several grades of road ta to the specification of the Bri Ministry of Transport, low tension insulators, pottery and refractories, cranes and large machine tools, abrasives and sulphuric acid, while factories planned before the war are now starting to produce chlorine, caustic soda and soda ash. New manufacturing activities are continually being planned and established The Supply Department recently drew attention to the possibilities of indigenous production of bichromate and it is now expected that an i portant Indian firm will be producing this chemical product early next year and on a scale large enough to meet the whole of the normal Indian demand. Other products of direct or indirect importance to her war effort which are now manufactured in India include railway equipment. biscuits. rubber tyres, asbestos goods, barbed wire, ground-sheets, paper, glycerine, copper sheets, hurricane lanterns, scap and agricultural implements.
India's desire to ce-operate in the common cause is manifest, too, in other directions. In response to an appeal by the Supply Department offers have been received from the States of Indore, Cooch Behar and Faridkot to supply road-making plants as gifts for use in the Middle East Machinery of this kind from some el the trading houses. public works departments, port trusts and larger municipalities which had been ap-"roached in the same way has already ^een shipped.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.