MR CHURCHILL’S CALL.

Kaikoura Star, Volume LXII, Issue 22, 19 March 1942, Page 4

MR CHURCHILL’S CALL.

TO MEN, WOMEN, BOYS AND GIRLS. Moving the Government’s motion with regard to woman power and man power in the House of Commons on December 2, and urging that the necessary legislation should be brought in forthwith, Mr Churchill said; We have to call upon the nation for a further degree of sacrifice and exertion. The year 1911 has seen the major problem of creating war production capacity and manufacturing equipment largely solved or on the high road to solution. The crisis of equipment is largely over and an ever-broadening flow is now assured. The crisis of manpower and woman power is at hand and will dominate the year 1942.

This crisis conies upon us for the following reasons. Great supplies of plants have largely been constructed. They are finished. They must be staffed, and fully staffed. We must maintain the powerful mobile army we have created with so much pains, both for home defence and foreign expedition. We must maintain our armies in the East, and be prepared for a continuance and expansion of heavy fighting there.

Wc must prepare for the expansion of the Air Force in 1942, anl a far greater expansion which it will take in 1943. Wc must face the continuous growth of the Navy to man the great numbers of warships of all kinds coming steadily into service. We must provide the modern equipment for the large armies which are being raised and trained in India.

Apart from our own needs, ,we must keep our engagement to send substantial supplies of tanks, aeroplanes, and other war weapons or war commodities to Russia in order to help to make good the loss of munition-making capacity which Russia has sustained by the German invasion.

We have also to forego the very important supplies we had expected from the United States but which have now, with our consent, been diverted to Russia. We have also to recognise that United States production is only now fully getting under way and that the quotas we had expected will in many respects be retarded. . . . We have hitherto been at a disadvantage in having to fight a well-arm-ed enemy with ill-armed or half-armed troops. That phase is over, and in the future the Hun will feel in his own person the sharpness of the weapons with which he has subjugated an unprepared, disorganised Europe and imagined he was about to subjugate the world. In the future cur men will fight on equal terms in technical equipment, ami a little later they will fight on superior terms. We have to make arrangements for all this and we have to make arrangements in god time. A heavy burden will fall upon us in 1942. We must not be found unequal to it; we shall not be found unequal to it. It has not been necessarv, nor would it indeed have been helpful, to make the demands upon the nation which 1 am about to set forth until now, These demands will intimately affect the lives of many men ami women, They will also affect the life of the nation in the following

We have to recognise the fact that a very large proportion of the population. particularly of the women, is occupied in ministering to the needs of the more actively engaged population, ami that the number has increased since the last war with the increase of the population who have to be ministered to. The precise test now going to be applied, and which has indeed been continuously applied beforehand but is

going to be applied much more vigorously, is not the calling of idle people to work but the sharpening and shifting forward of a proportion of their efforts into work which is more directly related to the war. It is a general moving up nearer the front, which will affect large blocks of people. What we have to make is a definitely harder turn of the screw The changes in our life which will take place, though severe, will not be violent or abrupt. They will be gradual, and gradually increasing in intensity. Mr Churchill then outlined the proposals. THE HOME GUARD. Speaking of the Home Guard, he said: We have nearly 1,700,000 men, the bulk of them well armed, spread about the whole country. I say the bulk of them well armed, because although we have a good many millions of rifles in this country we have not got enough rifles for all. We have several millions more men who will fight in the event of invasion for whom we have not been able to manufacture the necessary number of rifles, although our rifles are numbered by a good many millions. And therefore we supplement with machine guns, tommy guns, pistols, grenades, and bombards, and when all other tilings fail wc do not hesitate to place in the citizens’ hands a pike or a mace, pending further developments. (Laughter). After all, in war—especially in the night —a man thus armed may easily acquire a rifle for himself (Laughter). At any rate, that is what they are doing in Russia, defending their country. (Loud cheers). Though they have vast supplies of rifles they are fighting with everything, and that is what we shall certainly do if we are assailed in our island.

The Home. Guard is the great, prop and stand-by against invasion. Because of its being spread out over the country it is particularly adapted to meet tin airborne descent. BOYS AND GIRLS OF 16-18. There is another change which applies to both boys and girls. It is proposed to register boys and girls between the ages of 16 and 18. This will be done by Defence Regulation. Wc must be careful, particularly, that our boys do not run loose during this time of stress. (Cheers). Their education, their wellbeing, their discipline, and the service they can render must all be carefully supervised. All boys and girls in these age groups will be registered and subsequently interviewed under arrangements made by the youth committees of the education authorities, who will thus be able to establish and maintain direct contact with all of them. We have to think of the future citizen as well as of the business of carrying on the defence of the country.

Those who are not already members of some organisation, or doing useful work of some kind, will be encouraged ! to join one or another of the organisations through which they can obtain ; the training required to fit them for. national service. There’ are fine opportunities for help- 1 ing in the war open to strong lively • boys from 16 to IS. They can serve in | various vouth organisations, such as the cadets, and the junior training corps, the Air Training Corps, the Sea Cadets, and in voluntary organisations on the civil side. Boys of 17 may already join the Home Guards. Wc hope to be able to take some of the 16-year class, like the powder monkeys of Nelson’s day, in some areas where the Homo Guards will be entrusted with anti-aircraft and coast defence duties. However, in all these fields the wellbeing and training of the boys will be a prime consideration. WOMEN. In order to put as many minds at 1

rest as possible, 1 would say two things. First, we do not propose at the present time to extend compulsion to jjoin the Service to any married woman. They may, of course, volunteer, but they will not be compelled. ►Secondly, as regards married women and industry, wc have already the powers to direct married women into industry, but this power will continue to be used with discretion. The wife of a man serving in the forces or the Mer-

chant Navy will not be called upon to work away from her home area, nor will women with household responsibilities be removed from their home areas. But there are some married women without children or other household responsibilities, and we may have to call upon them to go to another area where their industrial services are needed. Women arc already playing a great part in this war, but they must play a still greater. The technical apparatus of modern warfare gives extraordinary opportunities to women, and this must be fully used. Here again the movement must be towards the harder form of service and nearer to the fighting line. All women above 18 are already liable to be directed by the Minister of Labour and National Service into industry. We have not the power at present, according to our reading of the law, to require women to serve in the uniformed auxiliary forces of the Crown or civil defence. We propose to ask Parliament for that power.

The number in these classes is 1,620,000. Of course, the vast majority are already usefully employed, and perhaps it is only one-quarter or onethird who will be affected and required to change from their present employment to one more effective for the war effort. Of the women who conic under the new powers, Mr Churchill said: Such will have the chance of choosing first, between the auxiliary forces, secondly civil defence, and thirdly such industrial work as may be specified by the Minister of Labour as requiring mobile workers. This work comprises primarily filling factories, and those factories in places where it is difficult to obtain the necessary women labour by ordinary processes, and certain other bottlenecks and industries where there is need for exceptional speedy reinforcements.

Those women who choose to join the auxiliary forces will not be free to decide which forces they join. The W’rens and the Waafs, to use terms which have passed into the commonplace of our speech, have both waiting lists and both have increasing requirements. But at a later date these may be distributed, and it is to the A.T.S. that this special movement of young women must now be directed. Why have we to make this demand for women for the Army? THE TWO VULTURES. Here I will make a diversion. There are two vultures hanging over us, and will hang over us until the end of the war. We do not fear them, but we must be constantly prepared against them. The first is invasion, which may never come, but which can only be held off by well-trained mobile forces and many other preparations in a constant state of readiness.

Moreover, if we are to use striking forces overseas at. any period of the war, we must be sure that those who remain at home are of sufficient strength, because upon this island the whole fate of the world depends. Here is a case where the saying “Better to be sure than sorry” deserves a larger measure of respect than it does usually in war. “We do not want the horrors which are perpetrated by the Germans wherever they go in so many countries to be thrust upon us here to the utter ruin not only of ourselves but of the world cause. And it is absolutely necessary that not only the armies in the East should be maintained and reinforced continually, but that we should constantly stand in this island with a very powerful, perfectly equipped army, ready to leap at the throat of any invader who might, obtain a lodgment from the sea or from the air. . . What is the other vulture for whom we must be ready? He is our old acquaintance the air raider, whojn we all know so well. We have had a very easy time for the past six months because the enemy has been occupied in Russia. But at any time Hitler may recognise his defeat by the Russian armies and endeavour to cover his disaster in the East by wreaking his battle fury on us. We are all ready for him, and we will receive him when he comes by day or by night with a far greater force and with more modern improvements, but we have always to be ready. . . We desire, Mr Churchill said in conclusion, to fit the knapsack with its extra load upon the national shoulders in the least galling and most effective manner. The aid of the House is required in this process, but that the load must be picked up now and carried on henceforward to the end embodies, we are sure, the resolve of the British poop I.