ALL MEN FOR WAR.

Auckland Star, Volume LXXI, Issue 154, 1 July 1940, Page 8

ALL MEN FOR WAR.

PRODIGIOUS DRIVE.

Factories At Full Tempo In

Britain.

IMPORTANCE TO FORCES,

(Received 11 a.m.)

LONDON, June 30.

The appointment by the Minister of Labour, Mr. Ernest Bevin, of Sir William Beveridge as surveyor of manpower is further evidence of energetic and progressive action by the Government to harness the whole resources of the nation for the war effort. The measures being taken to this end constitute a veritable revolution in the social structure of Britain.

Considerable apprehension existe regarding the rate at which manpower has been mobilised in Britain. What is, in fact, a remarkable achievement, tends to be obecured by the inevitably delayed appearance of results on the one hand and by misleading comparisons with Germany on the other. It ie often overlooked that, even after six years of intensive preparation f»r aggression, the Nazis were only able to mobilise 100 divisions on the outbreak of war, becarae their equipment was still short.

A fact of greater significance is that the rate at which the mobilisation of manpower has been carried out in Britain since the war began is held by competent experts to be in excess of the rate in Germany. The British armed forces include 1,000.000 volunteers. There have been registered to date for military service al>oiit 2,~r>0.000 men. and it is expected that by the end of July this total will have reached nearly 4,000,000.

But the figures of the fighting forces give a very incomplete picture of the war effort, when it is remembered that it is estimated that at least 14 men in industry are required to keep one man in the field, and about 40 men to keep one aeroplane in the air. The efficient uee of the available manpower dictates the employment in industry of hundreds of thousands of men of military age whose skill makes them indispensable in the factories.

The Minister of Labour, who, under the defence regulations is in a position to require from any person in the country such services as he may direct, is undertaking to train annually 100,000 skilled workere.

This prodigious diversion of the vast human and material resources uf Britain to the single dedicated purpose of saving civilisation in Kurope from the destructive anarchism of the Nazis and the Fascists has only recently really begun to declare itself in the output of men and machines for the war. From row on the flow from the camps and arsenals will be a rising tide, against which the enemy, with his already depleted r.nd overtaxed resources, will compete in vain.