MUNITIONS OF WAR

Dominion, Volume 12, Issue 64, 10 December 1918, Page 8

MUNITIONS OF WAR

BRITAIN AT HIGH PRESSURE TANKS, GUNS, SHELLS, AND AEROPLANES .(Impressions of the New Zealand Press Delegates during their recent tour ot the war zone.) • The New Zealand Delegates were afforded abundant opportunities of seeing Britain's great activities in the making of war munitions. We. visited factory after factory in England, Ireland, and Scotland, and, in these huge hives of industry wo saw thousands upon thousands of men and women, boys and girls, engaged in tho various and numerous phases of the industrial side of the war. Jn practically every part of the Kingdom the brains and ingenuity of tho captains of industry were allied with the labour and enthusiasm of the workers in the task of producing a maximum quantity of war material in a minimum spaco oftime. The result was that .the Allies were being fully supplied, and the days when their operations in the field of battle could be brought to a standstill, or worse, through shortage of munitions were days oft the unhappy past.

The biggest of the factories were naturally those engaged in producing ammunition. We' visited shell factories covering many acres of ground and employing thousands of people. There was one factory at where thirty thousand "hands" were at work day and night, not excepting Sundays. It is. impossible to go into technical detail or to give Hie arithmetic concerning these establishments, suffice it to say that these factories were scattered all over England, Scotland, and Ireland; and that their individual daily outputs of shell ran into figures that baffle the brain of man to realise. . / Tho really wonderful ■ thing is how these works'had been diverted from their peace-time operations into the'new channels of industry. Plants of enormous .size and capacity had been scrapped or recast or converted, as the case may be. whose fields of enterprise wore world-wide had risked their whole IV ' turt, sacrificed present business lnlerdsts, and jeopardised prospective interests, so that tho full measure of their producing capacity might be placed at the disposal of the. State, so that every ounce of weight .which they were able to contribute might be thrown into- the scale against the Hun. We met proprietors and directors of famous institutions who had, for Hie time being, abandoned their pre-war businesses entirely, converting their works and machines for tho solo production of war materials. The largest linen-mak-ing factory in the world was at the time of our visit producing nothing but cloth required in the construction of acroplitnes. A. company which before the war was engaged in making boilers and engines for steamships—a company whose name will be found stamped upon somo part of almost every steamer's engineroom in 1 the world-was turning lout thousands of big shells evory day, and many aeroplanes every week. One of the big' shipbuilding firms was producing, in every detail, bombing aeroplanes of (ho biggest typo known, and producing them at the rate of fourteen a week, or two a day—inluldition io building "standard" ships and war vessels of- all descriptions. At these works 19.000 persons were employed, and at neighbouring yards on the same river the number of workers was not much smaller. .- . Inspiring and Miraculous Effort. "<

It was an inspiring" and a wonderful sight, this pouring out of shells and guns and flying machines; this amazing change from peace to war activities. Pessimists used to think Britain decadent, Possibly thore were grounds for the impression that the Old Country was lagging behind in tho industrial racethat there was a tendency towards not laziness, but a 100-conservative and selfsatisfied frame of mind. However that may be, the war has unquestionably awakened.the nation, galvanised into life and being the genius that was merely dormant. From the standpoint of industrial capacity, indeed, it looks as though the Hun has unwittingly but very effectively rejuvenated Great Britain. .To the writer it seemed t.ot much short of a miracle to see in u country hitherto devoted to the prts cf peace such an overwhelming application of skill mid labour to the one sot purpose of defeating the enemy—to see practically the whole working nation engaged in making guns, or shells to feed the guns, or in filling the air with aeroplanes. And it must never be forgotten that all the time-the bulk of Britain's iranhood was at the wax. Tho factory employees contained only a very small percentage of men 'fit for active service. The great bulk of the factory workers were women and girls and boys, and it was marvellous beyond description to see them at work. One,"room" of a single factory covered, say, ten acres. . Think of it! Then acres of row after row of machines, tended for the most part l by women, pouring out, unceasingly,, day and -night, shells by the score of thousands, i It would probably he difficult So overestimate liow great a contribution, these works and workers have r.ade to the success of tlie Allied armies in .'.'ranee— to the splendid victory which now has been won., We visited great aerodromes, where machines were received from the factories, tested, armed, :>nd dispatched to the war front. From one of these establishments—one of several—wo learned that from 250 to .100 machines were being sent to France every month! And ■ we saw the -whole process of the construction of tank;, those . eird and wonderful vehicles of war which ensured tlie success of many a great advance by the Allied forces. Britain in Grim Earnest, The abiding, impression conveyed to the 7nind; through visiting tho war factories was a, sensc.i of the magnitude and the grim earnestness of it all. The demands of the war had, indeed, revolutionised the industrial mind and life of Great Britain, with 'the vcsult that the Army in the field was backed up by the i.ombined efforts of several millions of ueople .'engaged in supplying munitions. The output was so enormous thafe one was disposed to wonder if it were not' being overdone—until one learned from a high military authority in France that in recent fighting the British forces were expending big-gun ammunition at the rate of 12,000 tons a day. No .vender the enemy was driven back—and his defeat was caused no less by the British munition workers than by the Army itself.