London, June 13.
A striking indication of the large-scale precautionary measures for Home Defence was given by Sir John Anderson, the Home Secretary and Minister of Home Security, in the course of a debate in the House of Commons yesterday.
The issue of the necessary equipment for the civil defence services was, he said, complete.
Over 60,000,000 respirators, including childrens' respirators, and babies' helmets had been issued, as well as 3,000,000 steel helmets, and 1,500,000 oil-skin suits; while the number of stirrup pumps issued ran into six figures.
The total value of all this trade with Government orders to increase The total establishment of civil is highly important to Japan, they added. Japanese exports to North Africa and Italian Somaliland alone amounted last year to Y¥.40,000,000, while imports came up to N 7,000. 000; Exports to the Balkans, the Near East and Arabia amounted to approximately V. 38.000.000, and exports to Italy to Y.5,700,000.
Japan's chemical industry will be particularly hard hit since imports of salt from Africa and Mercury from Italy will now be cut off, it is believed. Cotton supplies from the Near East and Egypt will also be greatly reduced.
Japan's already hard-pressed mercantile marine, too, will suffer, for with the. Mediterranean closure, European-bound Japanese ships will have to make the long detour around the Cape if they are to continue service to the Continent.
One of the few bright spots in this picture is in the field of rayon exports. Japanese rayon manufacturers are declared to be making hurried plans for expansion into markets formerly supplied by Italy.
One of the major Italian markets that Japan now hopes to capture is India, where Italy sold 5,224,000 rupees worth of rayon last year. Other markets at which Japanese traders aim are China, Mexico, Egypt and Australia—Havas. their production will be met by the Government. The Government promised to compensate the manufacturers for their losses rather than permit the market prices of steel and iron to go up in Japan.
Some quarters regarded the move as an indication that Japan expects the huge American armament pr gramme to consume all available American scrap iron supplies, thereby cutting the Japanese war machine off from its largest source of scrap metal.—United Press.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.