Addressing the House of Commons on June 20, 1915, Mr. Lloyd George said, in part:

W

HAT I want to impress not merely upon the House but on the country is that the duration of the war, the toll of life and limb levied by the war, the amount of exhaustion caused by the war, the economic and financial effect—and in order to understand the whole depth and meaning of the problem with which wer are confronted I would state the ultimate victory or defeat in this wardepend on the supply of munitions which the rival countries can produce to equip their armies in the field. That is the cardinal fact of the military situation in this war. (Cheers.)

I heard the other day on very good authority-and this will give the House an idea of the tremendous preparations made by the enemy for this war and of the expansion which has taken place even since the war-that the Central European Powers are turning out 250,000

shells per day. That is very nearly eight million shells per month. The problem of victory for us is how to equal, how to surpass, that tremendous production. (Hear, hear.)

The Central European Powers have probably attained something like the limits of their possible output. We have only just crossed the threshold of our possibilities. In France I had the privilege of meeting M. Thomas, the Under Secretary for War, a man to whose great organizing capacity a good deal of the success of the French provisions of war is attributable, and I am very reassured not merely as to what France is doing and what France can do but as to what we can do when I take into account what France has already accomplished.

Let us see the position France is in. Her most important industrial provinces were in the hands of the enemy. Seventy per cent. of her steel production was in the hands of the enemy. She had mobilized an enormous army and therefore had withdrawn a very considerable proportion of her population from industry.

She is not at best as great an industrial country as we are. She is much of an agricultural and pastoral country. It is true that we have certain disadvantages compared with France, and they are important. She has not the same gigantic Navy to draw upon the engineering establishments of the country. That makes a very great difference. She has more complete command over her labor. That makes an enormous difference, not merely in the mobility of labor and the readiness with which she can transfer that labor from one center to another, but in the discipline which obtains in the workshops. She has another advantage with her arsenals, which at the outbreak of war corresponded to the magnitude of her Army -a huge Army. We had a small Army to provide for. She, in addition to that, had undoubtedly a very great trade with other countries in the production of munitions of war. These are the advantages and disadvantages. Still, know

ing these things and taking them all into account, the surplus of our engineering resources available for the materials of war is undoubtedly greater than that of France, and if we produce these things within the next few months as much as they are likely to produce the Allies would not merely equal the production of the Central Powers, but they would have an overwhelming superiority over the enemy in the material essential to victory. That is the first great fact I would like to get into the minds of all those who can render assistance to the country.

Germany has achieved a temporary preponderance of material. She has done. it in two ways. She accumulated great stores before the war. She has mobilized the whole of her industries after the war, having no doubt taken steps before the war to be ready for the mobilization of the workshops immediately after war was declared. Her preponderance in two or three directions is very notable. I mention this because it is essential they should be understood in inviting the assistance of the community to enable us to compete with this formidable enemy. The superiority of the Germans in ma

terial was most marked in their heavy guns, their high explosive shells, their rifles, and perhaps most of all their machine-guns. These have turned out to be about the most formidable weapons in the war. They have almost superseded the rifle and rendered it unnecessary.

The machinery for rifles and machineguns takes eight and nine months to construct before you begin to turn a single rifle or machine-gun. The Germans have undoubtedly anticipated the character of the war in the way no other Power has done. They realized it was going to be a great trench war. They had procured an adequate supply of machinery applicable to those conditions. The professional man was essentially a very conservative one- —(hear, hear)-— and there are competent soldiers who even today assume that his phase is purely a temporary one, that it would not last long, and we shall be back on the old lines.

I have no doubt much time was lost owing to that opposition. The Germans. never harbored that delusion, and were fully prepared to batter down the deepest trenches of the enemy with the heavy guns and high explosives, and to defend their own trenches with machineguns. That is the story of the war for ten months. We assumed that victory was rather due as a tribute from fate, and our problem now is to organize victory, and not take it for granted. (Cheers.) To do that the whole engineering and chemical resources of this country-of the whole Empire—must be mobilized. When that is done France and ourselves alone, without Italy or Russia, can overtop the whole Teutonic output.

The plan on which we have proceeded until recently I explained to the House in April. We recognized that the arsenals then in existence were quite inadequate to supply the new Army or even the old Army, giving the necessary material and taking into account the rate at which ammunition was being expended. We had, therefore, to organize new sources of supply, and the War Office was of opinion that the best method of attaining that object was to work

through existing firms, so as to have expert control and direction over companies and workshops, which up to that time had no experience in turning out shells and guns and ammunition of all sorts. There was a great deal to be said for that. There was, first of all, a difficulty unless something of that kind was done of mobilizing all the resources at the disposal of the State. The total Army Estimates were £28,000,000 in the year of peace. They suddenly became £700,000,000. All that represents not merely twenty or twenty-five times as much money; it means twenty or twentyfive times as much work. It means more than that, because it has to be done under pressure.

The sort of business

which takes years to build up, develop, strengthen, and improve has suddenly to be done in about five, six, seven, or eight months. The War Office came to the conclusion that the best way of doing that was to utilize the skill of existing firms which were capable of doing this work. The War Office staff are hardworking, capable men, but there are not enough. There is one consideration which cannot be left out of account, and that is that men who are quite equal to running long-established businesses run on old-established lines, may not always be adequate to the task of organizing and administering a business thirty times its size on novel and original lines.

To be quite candid, the organizing firms the armament firms-were also inadequate to the gigantic task cast upon them of not merely organizing their own work but of developing the resources of the country outside. They could not command the stock, and sub-contracting has undoubtedly been a failure. Subcontracting has produced something like 10,000 shells a month. We have only been at it a few days, and we have already placed with responsible firms orders for 150,000 shells a month. very short time I am confident it will be a quarter of a million or 300,000. (Cheers.) It is a process of inviting business men to organize themselves and to assist us to develop the resources of their district.

In a

We have secured a very large number of business men; many business men are engaged in organizing and directing their own business, business which is just as essential to the State in a period of war as even the organization of this office; but still there are the services of many able business men which are available, and we propose to utilize them to the full, first, in the Central Office to organize it; secondly, in the localities to organize the resources there; and, thirdly, we propose to have a great Central Advisory Committee of business men to aid us to come to the right conclusions in dealing with the business community.

I should like just to point out two or three of the difficulties, in order to show the steps which are taken to overcome them. The first difficulty, of course, is that of materials. There is, as I pointed out, material of which you have abundance in this country, but there are others which you have got to husband very carefully, and there is other material on which you have got to spend a considerable sum of money in order to be able to develop it at a later stage. With regard to this question, I think that it might be necessary ultimately for us to take complete control of the Metal Market, so that available material should not be wasted on non-essential work. (Hear, hear.) To a certain extent we have done that.

I should like to say a word with regard to raw material for explosives. We are building new factories so that the expansion of explosives shall keep pace with that of shells, and in this respect, again, I should like to dwell upon the importance of keeping up our coal supplies in this country. It is the basis of all our high-explosives, and if there were a shortage for any reason the consequences would be very calamitous.

Sometimes we do not get the best in these yards through the slackness of a minority and sometimes through regulations, useful, perhaps essential, in times of peace for the protection of men against undue pressure and strain, but which in times of war have the effect of restricting output. If these are with

drawn no doubt it increases the strain on the men, and in a long course of years they could not stand it. But in times of war everybody is working at full strain, and therefore it is difficult to exaggerate the importance of suspending restrictions which have the effect of diminishing the output of war material.

The fourth point is that the danger of having stoppages of work by means of strikes and lock-outs ought to be removed during the time of the war. (Hear, hear.) I should have liked to have seen strikes and lock-outs during the war made impossible in any trade, and I do not despair of getting the assent of those who object to compulsory arbitration under normal conditions to a temporary application of that principle during the period of the war.

The next step is one in which the Trade Unions are concerned. There was a very frank discussion between the leaders of the Trade Unions and myself, and I was bound to point out that if there were an inadequate supply of labor for the purpose of turning out munitions of war which are necessary for the safety of the country compulsion would be inevitable.

They put forward as an alternative that the Government should give them the chance of supplying that number of men. They said, "Give us scven days, and if in seven days we canot get the men we will admit that our case is considerably weakened." They asked us to place the whole machinery of Government at their disposal, because they had not the organization to enlist the number. We have arranged terms upon which the men are to be enlisted, and tomorrow morning the seven days begin. Advertisements will appear in all the papers, an office has been organized, and the Trade Union representatives are sitting there in council directing the recruiting operations. I am not sure, but I believe my honorable friend Mr. Brace is the Adjutant-General. Tomorrow we hope to be able to make a start. We have 180 town halls in different parts of the country placed entirely at our disposal as recruiting offices. We invite

the assistance of everybody to try to secure as many volunteers as they possibly can-men who are not engaged upon Government work now, skilled men -to enroll themselves in the Trade Union army for the purpose of going anywhere where the Government invited them to go to assist in turning out different munitions of war. If there are any honorable friends of mine who are opposed to compulsion, the most effective service they can render to voluntarism is to make this army a success. (Cheers.) If we succeed by these means-and the Board of Trade, the Munitions Department, and the War Office are placing all their services at the disposal of this new recruiting office-if within seven days we secure the labor, then the need for industrial compulsion will to that extent have been taken away.

CALL TO BRITISH WORKERS

In a special cable dispatch to THE NEW YORK TIMES, dated June 24, appeared the following:

"England expects every workman to do his duty," is the new rendering of Nelson's Trafalgar signal which is being flagged throughout the country today. Lloyd George has issued an appeal to organized labor to come forward within the next seven days in a last supreme effort on behalf of the voluntary system, and if it fails nothing remains but compulsion.

The appeal is being put before them by advertisements in newspapers, by speeches from labor leaders, and by meetings throughout the country. A new workmen's army is being recruited just as Kitchener's army was, and only seven days are given to gather together what may be termed a mobile army of industry. It is estimated that a quarter of a million men well equipped for the purposes required are available outside the ranks of those already engaged in the manufacture of munitions. Nearly two hundred industrial recruiting offices throughout the country opened at six o'clock last night, and, judging by reports already to hand, the voluntary

system seems again likely to justify itself.

"To British Workmen: Your skill is needed," runs one advertisement. "There are thousands of skilled men who are burning to do something for King and country. By becoming a war munitions volunteer each of them can do his bit for his homeland. Get into a factory and supply the firing line."

Posters and small bills with both an artistic and literary "punch" are being prepared and sent out for distribution. Newspapers with special working class clientèle are making direct appeals to their readers.

TEN THOUSAND MEN A DAY

Mr. H. E. Morgan, of the War Munitions Ministry, said in an interview printed by The London Daily Chronicle on July 1:

The War Munition Volunteers have amply justified their formation. During the last two days the enrolments throughout the country have averaged ten thousand skilled and fully qualified mechanics, who are exactly the type of worker we want. So far as the men are concerned, the voluntary principle in industrial labor has triumphed.

We have already transferred a large number of skilled mechanics from nonwar work to munition making, and daily the number grows. London compares excellently with other places as regards the number of volunteers, but naturally most of the men are coming from the great engineering centres in the North and Midlands.

A REGISTER OF 90,000

In a London dispatch of the Associated Press, dated July 16, this report appeared:

After upward of a fortnight's work in the six hundred bureaus which were opened when the Minister of Munitions, David Lloyd George, gave labor the opportunity voluntarily to enroll as munitions operatives, closed today with a total registration of ninety thousand

men. Registration hereafter will be carried out through the labor exchanges.

More men are needed, but the chief difficulty now is to place them on war work with a minimum of red tape. H. G. Morgan, assistant director of the Munitions Department, said today that this problem was causing some unrest among the workers, but that the transfers would take time, for the Government was anxious not to disturb industry more than necessary.

"The problem almost amounts to a rearrangement of the whole skilled labor of the country," said Mr. Morgan. "This, of course, will take considerable time."

THE CAMPAIGN CONTINUED A cable dispatch from London to THE NEW YORK TIMES said on July 15:

The Daily Chronicle says that a campaign to urge munition workers to even greater efforts is to open today with a meeting at Grantham, and next week meetings will be held at Luton, Gloucester, Stafford, Preston, and other centres. In the course of the next few weeks hundreds of meetings will take place in all parts of the Kingdom.

The campaign has been organized by the Munitions Parliamentary Committee, the secretaries of which have received the following letter from Munitions Minister Lloyd George:

"I am glad to hear that members of the House are responding so enthusiastically to my pressing appeal to them to undertake a campaign in the country to impress upon employers and workers in munitions shops the urgent and even vital necessity for a grand and immediate increase in the output of munitions of war."

Professor Mantoux has been asked by the French Munitions Minister to keep in touch with the campaign and to report from time to time as to the results achieved. It is felt that what affects England affects France, and later a similar campaign may be inaugurated in that country.

Sixty members of Parliament have promised to speak at the meetings.