BRITAIN’S REARMAMENT

Evening Star, Issue 23100, 28 October 1938, Page 9

BRITAIN’S REARMAMENT

END NOT YET WITHIN SIGHT MINISTER SATISFIED WITH PROGRESS Pres* Association—By Telegraph—Copyright LONDON, October 27. (Received October 28, at 8 a.ra.) Sir Thomas Inskip (Minister for Defence), in a speech at Stubbington, said: “ We are now in the middle of three years ,of rearmament, and the output has reached a scale which may fairly be described as floodlike. When Mr Chamberlain told the House of Commons that there were gaps in our defences he was told that he was guilty of excess honesty, but he does not regret the statement. Only the rarest optimist could expect no gaps, as the end of rearmament is not yet within sight” Sir Thomas Inskip said the question of a national register was under close consideration.

After referring to the readiness for national service which was recently displayed in a way in which the country perhaps had not seen since the beginning of the Great War, he expressed the hope that the public would soon receive assistance as to the directions in which its services were wanted. The people knew at the present time that no compulsion was necessary to secure the public service that the country needed. Dealing with the hopes of continued peace, Sir Thomas said that nobody would suppose they had secured the blessing of peace for all time, or even for years by one single stroke. Mr Chamberlain’s decision was a foundation. It was not an edifice. It was the beginning of a policy, and not a single act. Peace must be worked for.