PRODUCTION OF ARMS

Waikato Times, Volume 127, Issue 21199, 23 August 1940, Page 5

PRODUCTION OF ARMS

STRIKING INCREASE IN BRITAIN ACHIEVEMENT OF THE WORKING POPULATION PREDICTION OF TWO OK THREE YEARS’ WAR (Official Wireless) (Received Aug. 23, 11 a.m.) RUGBY, August 22 Presenting what he termed a “progress report,” Mr H. Morrison, broadcasting, paid tribute to all workers in the arms industry who had contributed to the striking increase in production in the last three months. “ Now we have an army that is armed,” he said. “Now we have an arms industry greater in output and far greater in future productive capacity than anyone would have dared think possible three months ago.” Mr Morrison instanced the Royal Ordnance factory, which, though due to begin production in September, had actually reached an output of 1,000,000 rounds of small arms ammunition by the first week in August, and another which would begin production in three months’ time instead of in April next year. Speaking of privately-owned firms, Mr Morrison said: “ One department alone, the Ministry of Supply, reports that within the last three months over sixty firms have switched over from civil production to war production, while the grand total of all departments is much higher. “ Factories making plastic mouldings three months ago are making mines today, and firms turning out spinning machinery then are making Bren guns now . There are works that switched since last May from lawn mowers to armourpiercing shells, from bicycles to fuses, from scales to gun carriages, from printing machinery to breech mechanism, from telephone components and electric meters and glass and springs and gas cookers to shells, and shells, and still more shells. “ Remember that thousands of builders toiled and sweated round the clock seven days weekly to get those factories completed, engineering firms forced the pace week after week to supply the equipment for those factories, and sailors ceaselessly worked on the high seas bringing material from America, and skilled men and women were brought forward or trained in the .work in the factories. Nobody spared himself, and nobody hung back. “ While our allies foundered one by one and imminent invasion loomed ever more darkly over the island, and Hitler threatened us with all the horrors of hell, the working population of Britain was hurling itself silently at its daily task.” The Minister concluded with the warning: “I am still anxious not to suggest that all is well, for it is not. We have not caught up with the enemy—far from it—but although we are not out of the wood we are beginning to see daylight through the trees. When we think of our worldwide tasks of defence and offence and of the two or three years of campaigning in many parts of the globe that may well be before us, we see our work hitherto as but the beginning of a beginning.”