MUNITIONS IN FRANCE.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXVII, Issue 1430, 29 July 1915, Page 4

MUNITIONS IN FRANCE.

A short paragraph in the French newspaper Matin summarises the munitions question, in France. “A prodigious effort,” it says, is necessary to meet the long thought-out “Industrial mobilisation of Germany.” Important measures are now to ire taken. For 10 months our factories and arsenals have not remained idle, but their organisation docs not respond sufficiently to the evergrowing demands of our armies. That is why new measures have been under consideration. We are in a position to state that it is proposed to bring back to our military establishments and munition works the skilled labour which is at this moment mobilised either in the reserve formations in the rear or at the front. This drawing off of mechanics and artisans from the production of guns and shells has been the subject of a powerful press agitation during the last few weeks. M. Berenger and M, Humbert have been formost insisting on the folly of depleting the “firing line in the factories” for the “firing line in the trenches.” The remedying of the error may fairly be attributed to this press agitation ; the error itself is due, firstly, to the sheer impetus of the conscription machine ; and, secondly, to a false psychology, which has regarded every able-bodied man not in uniform as a shirker, utterly ignoring the fact that for the last ro months the metal worker, mechanic or chemists is of vastly more military importance iu his factory or laboratory than he would be iu the trenches. This salutary agitation, curiously enough, is a repercussion of the munitions agitation in England.

M. Clemenceau, who in this matter speaks with exceptional authority, puts it in a nutshell, when he describes in L’Homme Enchaine Mr Lloyd George’s speech as exactly applicable to existing conditions in France. “With Mr Lloyd George,” be writes, “since he has become in a way the Minister who represents what is being thought in France, we ask only for arms and ammunition.”