FlightGlobal.com
Home
Premium
Archive
Video
Images
Forum
Atlas
Blogs
Jobs
Shop
RSS
Email Newsletters
You are in:
Home
Aviation History
1914
1914 - 1157.PDF
NOVEMBER 27, 1914. AN "INDUSTRIAL ($£30 ARMY" BADGE— FOR RING AND COUNTRY. THE following is the text of Mr. Archibald Hurd's article, referred to on page 1150 :— "Our Increasing Forces. " What is the position ? We have a vast fleet, larger than any fleet ever seen before, for which Parliament has voted 216,000 officers and men ; we are building up an army of over 2,000,000 men. If every able-bodied man, as has been suggested, enlists in the Army, how will all the wants of the fighting men afloat and ashore be supplied ? The Navy requires constant supplies of food, clothes of all descriptions, coal, oil, ammunition, and a hundred and one things which are essential to its efficiency. Mr. Churchill re minded us the other day of «the enormous impending influx of capital ships, the score of 30-knot cruisers, the destroyers and sub marines unequalled in modern construction.' The new army must be furnished with all it needs in the way of guns and general equip ment. We have m normal times in this country a military establish ment of about a quarter of a million first-line troops, and we are now expanding it as rapidly as possible to 2,000,000— multiplying it by " The food and clothes of our vast Navy and our huge Army will not fall like manna from the skies; ships—whether they be Dread noughts, cruisers, destroyers, or submarines—will not spring up in a night like mushrooms ; the big guns of the sea and land forces will not grow on trees like figs, nor can ammunition in unprecedented quantities be plucked from our hedgerows. " Essential Industries. " A score of industries are engaged in reinforcing our sea-power ; another score of industries are employed in expanding our military power. This process will continue at the highest pressure for many months, and with every day that passes the labour problem will increase, because as we complete new ships and finish training new armies and enter recruits for further corps, the demands for supplies will grow, until we shall be in a position of great embarrassment— unless a suitable remedy be applied. " The point which must be made clear is that the fighting which has to be done must be done in shipyard, factory, and workshop, as well as in the North Sea and on the battlefields of the Continent. Those who fight industrially, working long hours in a spirit of high patriotism, may not seem very heroic, and that is all the more reason why we should be careful not to tempt them from their jobs, either by appeals to go to the front or by heaping contumely on them. " But it may be said that all this work—which includes, by the way, all that the Belgian army requires—might be done by men over military age, No one who has ever visited a shipyard, armour ® ® AIRCRAFT WORK THERE were the following references to the work of air craft in the descriptive account communicated by an "Eyewitness" present with the British headquarters, dated November 16th and published by the Press Bureau on the 19th inst.:— " For the last ten days the weather has been much against aerial reconnaissances. It has either been so misty that nothing can be seen or so windy as to interfere with flying. There has also been a good deal of rain, which has added to the discomforts of active service. . . . "The weather on this day (Sunday 15th) was about the worst we have yet experienced. It was bitterly cold, and rain fell in torrents. Nevertheless, in spite of all difficul ties, our aviators carried out a successful reconnaissance. For some time they hovered over the German lines, observing the emplacements of batteries and searching the roads for hostile columns in the midst of a storm of driving snow and sleet which was encountered at high altitudes." In a supplementary despatch, dated November 20th and issued by the Press Bureau on the 22nd, there was the following :— " The great change that has occurred has been in the factory, or gun-making establishment, who has seen ad the various intricate machines in other workshops, busy with Navy or Army orders, would advance such an argument. These places require men in the fulness of their vigour, and the Government should take steps to make it known far and wide that they are regarded as combatants, sirfce they belong to the industrial army which is supporting the other armies on shipboard and on land. "A Button with a Purpose. " In France, where they understand the problem, a button is issued to all such workers. We should have a button which should be a certificate that, though these artisans and others are not dressed in blue serge or in khaki, they are engaged in war services. Some such distinctive badge ought to be introduced, and be issued to everyone of military age who cannot be spared to shoulder a rifle, whether he be engaged in an essential industry which is supporting the Navy and Army in efficiency, be employed on board fleet auxiliaries or transports, or be attached to one of the great railway systems. All these men are the necessary auxiliaries of our fighting strength, and if they fail the Navy cannot do its work, and the Army, however large it be, may as well not exist, for an army moves on its stomach. " Already not a little mischief has been done in the trades which are engaged in building, arming, armouring, and generally equipping the new ships of which the First Lord has spoken. There can never, in times like these, be a surplusage of skilled labour, but a positive shortage will arise unless men who are fighting their country's battles in the way for which their training fits them, are preserved from exchanging their implements for a rifle in deference to a misinformed public opinion. "No excuse is, of course, offered for the slacker : he ought to lie forced by law, or public opinion, to render his service in this emcr gency. But let us recognise that vital work in this war is being done by thousands of men who will never go on hoard any of our men-of-war or have the satisfaction of firing on the Germans in MB trenches. " It must be our aim to profit in a way that the (lermans canm.t do. The Germans are hard pressed. We are keeping from them what they want in the way of material to make good the wastage of war. The enemy is using up his resources from day to day at a prodigious rate, and he cannot replace them, while we are drawing on the seas for all we require for our new armies and our civil popu lation. Germany's list of contraband and conditional contraband goods is really • ' scrap of paper,' because all our ports remain open. She, on the other hand, has no merchant ships and no ports free from what amounts almost to a blockade. If we are to reap the full harvest of our sea power, we must protect the essential members of the industrial army." ® ® AT THE FRONT. weather, for winter has now set in in earnest. A miserable afternoon of snow and slush has been succeeded by a night of frost, and this morning is keen, calm, and bright, and promises well for the aviators, who have recently been so much hampered in their work." In the collection of extracts from the diaries of German soldiers sent by "Eyewitness," under date of November 21st, were the following :— " From a letter of a gunner of the Field Artillery 1— '"October 21 st, 1914. No. it. "' On September 26th a French aviator dropped a bomb on Cambrai, killing four Landwehr men and tearing off the arm of the Paymaster.' "From a letter of a man of the 242nd Reserve Regi ment of the same corps s— "' The shooting of the English artillery is marvellous. They get the right range and direction every shot, and place each shell within a yard of the previous one. They must be wonderfully well informed of our move ments. I don't know whether the intelligence is ob tained by their aeroplanes, which are always hovering over us, or whether they have telephones behind our lines.'" "57
Sign up to
Flight Digital Magazine
Flight Print Magazine
Airline Business Magazine
E-newsletters
RSS
Events
