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Aviation History
1919
1919 - 0866.PDF
State means proportionate disturbance in industry and commerce, and the longer the nation's finances remain unstable, the worse the cumulative effect on the individual and on commercial relations must be. Apart, then, from all considerations of patriotic duty to the State, it is clear from this line of reasoning that the selfish interests of the individual will be best served by investment. Not only is the return on investments good—no State Loan has ever been issued on such favourable terms—but the Victory Bonds appeal to the sporting instincts of the people, while every pound subscribed assists to stabilise our credit and thus to bring about a more settled condition of affairs generally. • • • It may be true that the conduct of the The Ministry affairs of the Ministry of Munitions »* ?L lias been lacking in business discernment Munitions ,. ° . ™. , and the m many directions. The reports of War Comptroller and Auditor-General on its methods have made it impossible to absolve the department from charges of gross incompetence and slackness in dealing with the nation's money. But if it has wasted resources in some directions, in others it must be adjudged to have made good in the work for which it was created— to provide our fighting services with the material to aid them to achieve victory over the enemy. The enormous extent to which the tiny pre-War output of munitions of war was expanded sounds more like a romance than the statement of a series of sober facts. The Minister of Munitions, reviewing the work of his department during the War, told the House of Commons last week that, among other matters, the total number of aeroplanes we possessed at the outbreak of War was about ioo. (Incidentally, this is not in accord with the figures given to the House at the time Mr. Joynson-Hicks and those associated with him in " gingering-up " the War Office, in 1913, were assured we possessed and when they were invited to go round the aerodromes and count them). At the date of the Armistice we were producing 4,000 a month ! In April last year the great German offensive was made, and the organisation was submitted to a test which tested it from top to bottom. In the course of that offensive our Armies lost 1,000 guns, 70,000 tons of ammunition, 4,000 machine guns, 200,000 rifles, 250 million rounds of small-arm ammunition, 700 trench mortars, and 200 tanks. At the time when that news began to come in there was a good deal of industrial trouble in this country. As soon as it became known in the workshops that the British soldier was fighting with his back to the wall faction and disunion were swept away, and within a fortnight every loss was replaced, in many cases by superior weapons. In August last year, when the British offensive began, in one week there was an expenditure of 2,900,000 rounds of gun ammunition, whilst in the culminating period of October last the biggest week's expenditure amounted to 3,500,000 rounds. On the day the British Army broke the Hindenburg line they fired 943,837 shells—a weight of 40,000 tons. That was a greater number fired in that 24 hours than . was fired in the whole four years of the South African War. If they took the pre-War output at 55,000 per annum, it meant that our guns were firing that day every 80 minutes an amount equal to the total pro duction before the War. A truly marvellous record, this. It is one, too, which ^demonstrates as no other statistics we have ever seen could do what a wonderful potentiality for production this country possesses. If only we are true to ourselves and do not fritter away time and resources in useless discussion we have no need to fear the manufacturing activities of the greatest among the industrial nations. Touching upon the charges of waste wl w n s" and muddle which have been brought Not Waste against the Ministry, the Minister went on to explain that much of this was due to the amount of experimental work which had to be carried out and the placing of contracts for supplies which had become obsolete before they could be delivered. To illustrate the point, he let the House into a little bit of interesting secret history. He told them he held in his hand specimens of the bullets which stopped the German air raids on this country. There were six different types of bullet used at one time or another for that purpose. The first issue was indistinguishable from the bullet an infantryman fired from his rifle, and the subsequent changes, al- thought almost imperceptible on a casual examination, resulted in the production of the bullet which, used against the raiders on Whit-Sunday of last year, prevented any further German air raids on this country. It was true, he said, that the money spent on some of the types of bullet was not remunerative if judged by ordinary peace standards, but if the computation were to be made on the ground of loss of money alone, there ought to be placed on the other side of the account the saving to the State, not only of lives, but in respect of the interference with supplies and material damage. On the day after Whit suntide of last year it was known the Germans had prepared for an air raid on this country by heavier- than-air machines greater than ever before. But the enemy airmen did not come, because they knew of the reception which had been given them on Whit- Sunday. It is very interesting,and as a defence of the methods of the Ministry in production and experiment it may be passed as quite convincing. We have already said that the record of the Ministry in these directions is perfectly wonderful and rebounds vastly to its credit. But we really must point out, though we did not set out to be critical, that all these tit-bits of inside history and the records of experiment and production do not dispose of the charges of, for in stance, paying large accounts twice or even three times over. Still, it was an able and generally a convincing outline of a stupenduous task well carried out. • ' • * Another topic of interest dealt with in the speech was that of what has now come to be known as the " Linen Deal." The production of linen at the time of the Armistice had been brought up to 7,000,000 yards per month, and the Ministry found that it had 43,000,000 yards on its hands, for which they had paid from is. 3d. to 4s. a yard. The obvious thing for the Government to do, finding themselves with all this linen on their hands, was to try to get it back into the hands of the traders who knew the business. If it had been possible to come to terms with the linen manufacturers that The Linen Deal 366
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