GREAT PROGRESS

Manawatu Standard, Volume LX, Issue 227, 23 August 1940, Page 7

GREAT PROGRESS

INDUSTRIAL FRONT. ACHIEYEHENT IN BRITAIN. (United Press Association —By Electric 1 eiegrapti —Copy rigb t. > (British. Official Wireless.) Received August 23, 11.33 a.m. . . itUGBY, Aug. 22.

Presenting what he termed a “progress report,” the Minister of Supply (Mi? H. Morrison), in a broadcast, paid a tribute to all workers in the arms industry who had contributed'to the striking increase in production ih the last three months. “Now we have an army that is aimed; now we have an arms industry greyer in output and far greater in ruture productive capacity than anyone would have dared to think possible three months ago,” he said.

Mr Morrison instanced a Royal Ordnance factory which, though it was due to begin production in September, had actually reached an output of a million rounds of small arms ammunition in the first week oi August, and another Which would begin production in three months time instead of April next year. Speaking of privately-owned firms, he said : “One department alone of the Ministry of -Supply reports that within the last three months over 60 firms have switched over from civil production to war production, while the grand total of all the departments is much higher. Factories which were making plastic mouldings three months ago are making mines to-day. “Firms previously 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 bicycles 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 for seven days a week to get those factories completed. Engineering firms have' forced the pace week after week to supply the equipment. Cor those factories, and sailors ceaselessly have worked on the high seas bringing material front America. Skilled men and women were brought forward or trained to work in the factories. Nobody spared himself. Nobody hung back. “SEEING DAYLIGHT.” “While our Allies foundered one by one, and imminent invasion loomed ever more darkly over the island, and Hitler threatened us with all the horrors of hell, the working population of Britain was hurling itself silently at its daily task.”

The Minister concluded with a 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, although wo are not out of the wood, we are beginning to see daylight through the trees. When wo think of our world-wide tasks of defence and offence and of the two or three years’ 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.”