DIFFICULTIES OVERCOME

Wairarapa Times-Age, 30 July 1941, Page 6

DIFFICULTIES OVERCOME

Mr Churchill gave “facts and figures to show how we have succeeded, by improved organisation and by the smoother running of our expanding machinery, in overcoming difficulties.” In spite of troubles and difficulties the Ministry of Supply output in the last three months had been one-third greater than in the three months of the Dunkirk period. He continued: “Though cur Navy, Army and Air Force are larger, the Ministry of Supply has one-third more people working in its factories. Each man is turning out each day, on scale, as much as in that time of almost super-human effort—this despite dilution, dispersion, air raids, blackouts and all the troubles I have described. Let me present a balance sheet —one-third more workers and one-third more output is quits. But all the adverse factors I described have somehow been cancelled cut by the superior development and organisation. We have made in the last three months more than twice the field guns made in the Dunkirk three months. • In munitions we are turning out are half as much again, and the combined programme of merchant and naval shipping now in hand is greater than at any period during the last war.. ENORMOUS PROGRESS “Since the present Government took over, progress and expansion have been enormous and continuous. In fighter aircraft we are at least as much ahead of the Nazis as a year ago, and there has been no sacrifice of quality to quantity. As for bombers, in British production alone the bomb discharge on Germany has been doubled and in the next three months we shall double it again. The output of warlike stores in this seventh quarter of this war is nearly double the production in the seventh quarter of the last war and eoual to that attained in the fourteenth quarter of the last war. The time lost through labour disputes has been much less. Twelve million days were lost in the last war, but so far less than two million in this. I received just before coming her today information that at eleven o’clock this morning, there was no stoppage of work of any kind arising from any dispute in any part of Britain.” A SERIOUS WARNING After paying tribute to the Minister of Labour and the great work he was accomplishing, Mr Churchill gave what he described as “a very serious warning.” “There are no doubt tempetations to optimism,” he said: “It is a fact that the mighty Russian State, so foully and treacherously assaulted, has struck back with magnificent strength and courage and inflicted a prodigious and well-deserved slaughter for the first time upon the Nazi armies. It is a fact that the United Slates, the greatest single Power in the World, is coming to our aid on a gigantic scale, and is advancing in rising wrath and conviction to the very verge of war. It is a ■fact that German air superiority has been broken and that German air attacks on this country have for the time being ceased. The Battle of the Atlantic, although far from won, has, partly through American intervention, moved impressively in our favour. It is a fact that the Nile Valley is much safer than it was twelve months ago, or three months ago. It is a fact that the enemy has lost all pretence of theme or doctrine and has sunk even deeper in moral and intellectual degradation and bankruptcy and that almost all his conquests have become burdens and sources of weakness. But with all this, we must not be led for a moment to suppose that the worst is over. The formidable power of Nazi Germany, the vast mass of destructive munitions which they have made, and the courage and skill of their striking forces and the ruthlessness of their centralised war direction, the prostrate condition of so many peoples under their yoke and the resources of so many countries which have been made to some extent available to them, all these restrain and forbid the slightest relaxation.

It would be madness to suppose that Russia or the United States are going to win this war for us. The invasion season is at hand and all the armed forces: have been warned. By September 1 we have to reckon with a gambler's desperation. We stand here still champion. If we fail, all fail; if we fall, all fall together. It con only be a superb, intense land prolonged effort by the whole British Empire that the great combination of about three-quar-ters of the whole human race against Nazidom will come into vehement and dominant life. For more than a year we have been all alone. All alone we

have had to guard /the treasure of mankind. Although there have been profound and encouraging changes in the situation, our responsibilities remain undiminished, and we shall only discharge them by continuing to pour cut in the common cause the utmost endeavours of our strength and virtue, and if need be proffer thel last .drop of cur heart’s blood.”