The Press TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 24, 1942. Manpower

Press, Volume LXXVIII, Issue 23803, 24 November 1942, Page 4

The Press TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 24, 1942. Manpower

In a statement reported from Auckland yesterday the Prime Minister gave an account of the Government’s manpower policy, saying much that commands assent in principle. “A total war effort,” he said, for example, “ demands the “fullest response, not only on the “fighting fronts but in the sphere “of essential industry and production.” The War Cabinet and the Government were “bent on achieving” this full response, and were “ successfully achieving ” it. The extent of this success and the efficiency of the methods used in pursuit of it have been questioned, however, upon apparently good grounds; and although the Prime Minister’s statement seems to have been intended as an answer, it falls short. Nobody has ever doubted that the War Cabinet gives “ constant consideration,” as Mr Fraser says, to all civil and military demands; this reassurance was unnecessary. But when he says that the War Cabinet’s policy is “dic- “ tated by the trend of events,” the reassurance is of a somewhat uncertain kind. Mr Fraser may not have meant that the War Cabinet’s policy has been, and is, in effect, one of extemporisation; he may have meant, merely, that its policy has had to be flexible enough to be adapted swiftly and smoothly to the course of events. But if that was what he meant, it is nevertheless true that all criticisms of the Government’s manpower policy, in the end, converge on that weakness of extemporisation in the Government’s manpower policy; of extemporisation, rather, unrelated to a policy. It is impossible to trace the lines of a manpower policy through the phases of the competition between the armed forces and industry for men. The contest over farm labour releases has exhibited this competition most conspicuously, but it extends over a much wider field. Lieutenant-General Puttick’s report showed that, in three months, 10,000 men were manpowered out of the Army, incompletely trained, and back into industry. Army units are depleted and training impeded by this process. There may be an answer to the suggestion that, if these men must be manpowered out, they should never have been manpowered in; but if there is, the Government has not given it. The conclusion cannot easily be avoided that over-hasty decisions poured men into camp who, if a sound selective system had operated, would not have been withdrawn from industry. It is a connected point that, as General Puttick’s report also shows, the facilities ”o train the accelerated drafts of men were inadequate. To overload the training system is a sufficiently bad mistake. To overload it with men who have to be drafted out again before they can be trained is doubling the error and the mischief of it. It is, of course, true that a selective system of a sort has operated, and that both military call-up and releases have been subject to it. “ Men engaged in essen- “ tial work,” Mr Fraser said, have the right to appeal. But the much more important truth about this system is that it is irrational in design and in its working. The classification of essential industries is incomplete and anomalous, it does not rank industries according to their national importance and due demand on manpower. It does not even clearly separate essential and non-essential industries. These are the faults and failures of extemporisation. Mr Fraser’s statement, unfortunately, neither recognises them nor promises to amend them.