SPUR OF SLOGANS

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume 76, 27 October 1941, Page 2

SPUR OF SLOGANS

USE IN WAR PRODUCTION PATRIOTIC APPEAL TO WORKERS Sydney, Oct., 10. i Suspended in front of a group of engineers making gun barrels in an Australian factory is a placard bearing the words, “Hitler will slip on your ; elbow grease.” It is one of the many ‘graphic slogans employed in Australian munition shops to stimulate the production of war equipment. In the gun shop operated by General Motors-Holden's Ltd., in Adelaide. a thousand men read evcry day a notice which says: "Anti-tank guns must function perfectly at the critical moment. Don't let your men down! Your aim should be to perfect their aim.” In another part of the factory the 'employees are told: "There is a production army behind the Nazi panzers. Our front line, too, depends upon our production lines.” A little farther on you will read: “Attention! Gun drill makes good gunners and good drilling makes good guns,” and as each completed gun rolls off .the assembly line it rattles under a huge placard, stretching from wall to wall, reading: "Fill up the blanks and stop Hitler’s tanks!” Precisely what material results are obtained by the use of high-powered war propaganda in the nation's factories has not been mathematically determined, and may never be, but its imprint upon the mind of the individual worker is undoubtedly great and, in the long run, may have a measurable effect upon the volume of output. It is significant that one factory which employs this method of direct potriotic appeal has not known a strike nor an hour's stoppage of work since ; the war began. FIRST-CLASS GUNS No Australian firm has given more , specialised attention to l'act<#y slogans than General Motors-Holden's, Lid., whose great chain of workshops ; n Victoria, South Australia, and New South Wales, formerly engaged in the 1 manufacture and assembly of motor I vehicles, is now directing 95 per cent. i of its manufacturing energies to the i production of munitions of war. ] During the British advance into Syria a soldier in the A.I.F. crossed I the Litani River with his comrades by an Australian-built pontoon bridge. Twelve months earlier he had worked jin the Holden’s factory in Adelaide ' where those pontoons were made. His ! name was A. A. Drummond. When j the battle was over he sat down and , wrote a letter to a friend in the fac- ! lory telling him what a good job those ! pontoons had done, j The recipient of the letter showed j it to the works foreman, who showed jit to the works manager, who showed I it to the factory owner, who said: J "Copy it on the wall for everyone to And there it is, in letters a foot high, I running from one end of the factory wall to the other.j “We found that they had blown up the bridge over the Litani River and Imy mind flew back to you boys at j Holden's because that’s where your ponI toons came into action, and what a J good job they did. too! The traffic that went over that bridge! Scout tanks. ! Bren carriers, lorries, and everything ‘ possible!” | Underneath the letter they have appended an extract from a war correspondents account of the action:— "The attack began at 11.30 p.m.. and Australian engineers about two hours later began throwing a pontoon bridge across the river.” Only an incredibly unresponsive mind could remain unmoved by the message contained in that unexpected, enthusi- : .'istic letter from the battlefield. At any rate, the cold fact is that since it. • has been emblazoned in those loot-high

letters on the factory wall the output of pontoons has’Jumped to hitherto un- I attained figures. Hundreds of pontoons, are now being delivered to the Army every month. \ SOLDIER’S MESSAGE Nothing is more ca]oulatcd to stir! t the imagination of a munition worker ] •than the direct word and testimony of i the soldier from the front. When the first batch of Australian-built 25-poun-der guns was officially handed over to the Army at the Melbourne factory <>t Charles Ruvvolt Proprietary, Ltd., someone had the inspiration t" invite the General Officer Commanding-in-Chief in Australia, Major-General Sir liven Mackay. to talk to the men who i had built the guns In unemotional ; matter-of-fact tones, the man who j commanded the Sixth Div ision at Barj dia and Tobruk spoke these words: ! “My earnest hope is that Australia will keep her men well supplied with these guns. However many you send they will be gladly received, because this is one of the best pieces of artillery that British soldiers have had during the war. It was unfortunate that the Sixth Division lost all its guns during the evacuation from Greece. Had it possessed its 25pounders during the fighting in Crete the German invasion of that island could have been stopped.” You might have heard a pin drop as he finished that speech. Seven hundred men, their hands and faces still oily from the machines they had been operating, just stared at him, fascinated. And seven hundred men went back to their machines with an even grimmer determination to give the "boys over there” the guns they were wanting. THE CHURCHILL TOUCH Few industrialists appreciate the value of what might be called “the Churchill touch.” Of the hundreds of factories filling war orders in Sydney, those that make use of slogans can be counted on the fingers of one hand. In Government munition factories j such propaganda is unknown, j The one firm which sets great store on verbal and written encouragements to its workers, General Motors-Hol-den’s, actually employs a staff of experts to look after this side of its activities. They are the men who coin such phrases as “This war will be won in the factory,” or “A shadow across Hitler's path—Australian industry, and that means you!” In this sphere of invention no one encourages them to greater flights of fancy than the Director of Ordnance Production. Mr L. J. Hartnett, who himself is no mean coiner of the apt phrase and the punget slogan. Mr Churchill has given the men at the machine some of the industry’s . best wartime epigrams—“The front line runs through the factories,” and “Give us the tools and we will finish the job.”