LACK OF FORESIGHT

Evening Post, Volume CXVI, Issue 31, 5 August 1933, Page 11

LACK OF FORESIGHT

The lack of foresight on the part of the War Office was further shown byj its failure to set up a programme authority to study the necessities, possibilities, and probabilities of the future— as distinct from the mere.tabulation of quantities due on contracts placed. The fact that this had not been seen to at the very beginning of the war had not merely wasted the period of ten months which had already elapsed, but the delays involved a further wait of several anxious and,fateful months before the process of manufacturing guns, rifles, machine-guns, and even shells on an adequate scale could be even commenced. A third, and in some respects, a more disastrous failifre M-as their coniplete neglect to investigate the explosive problem. They had taken no steps to enlarge their capacity for filling shells,, even to the limit of the orders which they themselves had already gh'cn for shell bodies. In fact, they had not even considered the question, of whether there was a sufficient supply available of the

explosive material with which these shells Arere charged to meet even the requirements of their own limited programmes. Had this deplorable blunder _ not been remedied in ' time, the British Army could not have been equipped in 1916 with a third of the material needful for the operations. Perhaps the most striking . illustra-. tioii of the limited horizon of the War Office authorities can be found in their refusal (backed, it may be' observed, by the Secretary for State) to admit the necessity for.the guns, which, in August, 1915, I ordered in excess of War Office demand. Most of the special steps that were taken after the formation o£ the Ministry of Munitions to stimulate production could equally well have been taken in 1914. ■■•■.'■■ , . It was to those special steps that the greatly accelerated yield on account of outstanding War Office orders in the latter part of 1915, as well as the immense augmentation of output in 191b on direct orders of the Ministry, was mainly due.