If India is not still to continue as a land of lost opportunities she may well command the world’s paper-supply in future. For, it would appear, according to expert opinion, that the failure of wood to supply the requirements of the paper industry has placed India and Burma in a unique position of advantage as the sole suppliers of the proper substitutes in the raw materials required. The paper-industry by its very nature as “a picker-up of unconsidered trifles” is, as its history shows, subjected to periodically recurring conditions of acuteness. During the past 100 years, rag, textile wastes, straw and esparto have, each in its turn, failed to meet the ever-increasing demands of the industry and the present crisis, we learn is among other causes, of economic and industrial dislocation resulting from the war, mainly due to the dearth of wood for providing pulp. A paper was recently read in London before the Indian section of the Royal Society of Arts by Mr. Willian Riatt, F.C.S., the Celluloid Expert to the Government of India, attached to the Forest Research Institute, Dehra Dun.
