OUTPUT OF ARMS INDUSTRY

Dominion, Volume 33, Issue 283, 24 August 1940, Page 12

OUTPUT OF ARMS INDUSTRY

Increasing Production PROGRESS REPORT BY MINISTER

Still A Long Way To Go

(British Official Wireless.)

RUGBY, August 22.

Presenting what he termed a “progress report,” the Minister of Supply, Mr. Herbert Morrison, in a broadcast, paid a 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 to think possible three months ago.”

Air. Morrison Instanced a 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 in the first week in August and another which would begin production in three months’ time, instead of April of next

year. Speaking of privately-owned firms, he said: "One department alone of the Ministry of Supply reports that within the last'tiiree months over 00 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 arc making mines today. Firms which were turning out spinning machinery are making Bren guns. There are works that have switched since last May from lawn mowers to armour-piercing shells, from bicvcles 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 have toiled and sweated round the clock seven days weekly to get those factories completed. Engineering firms have forced the pace week after week to.supply equipment for those factories, sailors have ceaselessly worked on the high seas bringing material from America and skilled men and women brought forward or trained to work in the factories. Nobody has spared himself. Nobody has hung back. “While our allies foundered one by one and imminent invasion loomed ever more darkly over this island, and Hitler theatened us with all the horrors of hell, the working population of Britain was burling 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, though 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 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.”