An account of the methods with which the Soviet Union received supplies during the Second World War, and the importance of the continuance of such trade after the hostilities have ended.

For four years the convoys had taken supplies to Russia via the Murmansk route; 91 per cent of goods had got through. Supplies had also travelled overland through Persia to the Eastern Front (brief shot of ski troops and T-34 tanks). The United Kingdom Commercial Corporation distributes goods such as wool, collaborating with Churchill's Aid to Russia Fund and the Red Cross (crates seen being stencilled). Lord Beaverbrook makes a speech followed by sequences on diving suits and medical supplies. Commonwealth countries provide raw materials: sugar (much of it coming from British sugar beet and cane plantation in Trinidad); Australian and New Zealand sheep provide wool, rubber is tapped in Ceylon, South Africa provides industrial diamonds, and West Africa's latest crop is sisal, whose leaves are cut, the resulting fibre being dried and woven into fishing nets back in England. The Persian route to Russia is illustrated. The organisational effort is also illustrated. Tank locomotive No 5937 pulls a mobile power station, built in Manchester and Wolverhampton; it is assembled and tested before being shipped out. The generators have a choice of boilers and can supply a town of 80,000 inhabitants. The sections are mounted on Russian gauge rolling stock, and a special stretch of railway is built at the dock to help move them to the ships; they are protected by frameworks and by special arrangements on the ships. A floating crane swings them onto the deck: panning shot of docks and sidings filled with trucks. The film ends with the message "aid to Russia now - aid to world trade in years to come".

Notes

Technical: print is a little dupey.