Foreign News: Rubber from Malaya

When the Japanese took Singapore and the Dutch East Indies they captured 90% of the world’s supply of crude rubber. Americans felt the pinch in tire and gasoline rationing; the U.S. Army needed all the rubber that could be had and more besides, which was to be produced in many new synthetic-rubber plants. Malaya as a rubber source was written off.

But all Malayan rubber was not lost to the U.S. Last week it was learned that a small trickle has begun to come to U.S. ports once more—via Japan and Russia. Tokyo, saddled with a mountainous surplus, sells it to the Soviet Union; Russia again trades it for U.S. war goods which she needs to fight Japan’s allies in Europe. Some day Malayan rubber from Japan might roll again down Singapore’s wide streets under the U.S. flag. Meanwhile, the world had another example of a paradox of international war and commerce: how to trade, at second hand, with the enemy.