WHERE THE WALLS OF EMPIRE ARE FORGED

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXVI, Issue 23507, 18 November 1939, Page 3 (Supplement)

WHERE THE WALLS OF EMPIRE ARE FORGED

By J. B. PRIESTLEY, World-famous Novelist and' Playwright

myself, simply by turning the handle that worked an instrument like a gigjmtic pair of pincers. These instruments seemed to be of many _different sizes, but were alike in keeping up a colossal din. Mv guide poured out a ceaseless stream of information, technical comment, and, judging by his grim smile, what passes in these shipyards for humorous anecdotes, but as he spoke in a muttering Glasgow accent in an air that shook with the smashing and battering of iron and steel, only a small fraction of his talk entered my head. Monster Ready for the Water He had a passion for odd and rather frightening places. He took me clean underneath an enormous ship that was nearly ready for launching, and pointing to some trifling little device he said that if one did something or other to it, the whole monster would instantly make for the water. I was glad when we crawled out. Then he had a fancy for climbing, finst up slippery ladders, and finally in a very shaky hoist that took us out to a tiny iron platform, where we could look down on a tremendous scene of activity. Oddly enough, although the din is terrific, there is a complete absence of fuss, and though thousands and thousands of men are hard at it, you only notice little groups here and there, coolly and methodically busy. The men who do the oxy-acetvlene welding wear strange square headcoverings, and you come across them in odd corners, lit by their spluttering

grcenv-white glare, looking like Martians who have quietly invaded us. If 1 were an etcher 1 would haunt these shipyards, for 1 never saw places that cried out so fiercely to be drawn. The great bulks of the hulls, the delicate" plantations of high cranes, the thickets of props, among which these groups of ingenious pigmies cluster round their work, they clamour for big sheets of drawing paper and finepointed pencils. On a steel turret was scrawled in large chalk letters: "Lost —One Pair of False Teeth." How did he come to lay tlietn aside? And have they, by this time, been riveted or welded, made ready to suffer a sea change? The largest shed, with its immensely distant and darkened roof and its innumerable points of light, was like a cathedral of the god of the turbines. My guide—for it was fairly quiet in there and so I could catch a little of what he said —had a contempt for the turbine jobs, which seemed to him so fiddling as to be hardly worthy of a real man's time. My Kind of People You just go on and on fitting in several million little things that look like safety-razor blades.. It is incredible that by forcing steam through such tilings our enormous ships should travel the North Atlantic faster than we are allowed to go in our cars through any town. My guide's respect was reserved for the solemn men with hammers who waited near little furnace doors for

some hot metal to emerge, and then, as it was cooling, swiltly banged and tapped it into shape that might be required. These, it seemed, are the chaps who earn the money, and can confidently call for a "dram an' a put." In the Model Room they gave me a glass of sherry. It was good sherry, but it was flavoured with passionate regret that I could , not seize one of the models, the most delectable

• AT first there is nothing about the Glasgow street.}, dingy under a blanket of clojid and smoke, to suggest that anything tremendous is about to happen. Then as you draw nearer the Clyde there is a kind of throbbing in the air. You cannot put a name to it. A throbbing that might become a hammering, in fact, miles and miles of hammering. But then when you turn through a gate, after being closely inspected, you know that-you have heard, and are now about to see, the very lifeline of this Empire being forged and hammered. These thousands and thousands of stocky,,craggy men, who have a passion for football and a weakness for chasing whisky, down 7 with beer, are probably the most important citizens in Britain or any other country. Without them the democratic idea in Europe might/disappear for ever. Ihey are a greater menace to Hitler than 20 Array corps. They are the builders of ships, and the best builders of ships the jWork! has ever seen. On the stocks of these Cljde shipyards, at this very moment, there is a greater tonnage than that of the whole German fleet. That din which seems to puncture the very air it comes mostly from the hydraulic riveters should be wirelessed to Berlin every day, for it .says more than a hundred .talks. They Grout Every Hour it announces that the steel walls ot battleships, . liners, cargo vessels, are mounting evcr\ working hour, and they are held together by the rivets r£ the Clyde. Once again we have been told that our ' Empire is falling to pieces, and once again we have seen that it is doing nothing of the kind. It stands fast, riveted by the Clyde. I hope nobody will be alarmed if J mention that 1 put in a couple of rivets

creatures, niul run off like blazes with it. Any healthy-minded small boy would nlinost swoon with mingled delight and envy at the sight of those model ships, accurate to a fraction of an inch, and all coloured and glittering. I am no longer healthy-minded, but I am still at heart a small boy, and I riearly bolted with tho model of the —well, the nearest one. It was an anti-climax to return through those guarded gates into the commonplace darkish streets. Not that I disliko Glasgow. I had been there twice before, once to try out a play, and once to attend a dinner and speak my piece at tho University, but this time I began to understand the place. And I like it. These are my kind of people. Jock, V.C. Their Lord Provost, Pat Dollan, a fine fiery radical who watches tho interests of his city like a bull terrier, is a man after my own heart, and together we sneaked off to see Celtic play Queen's Park. Then later, after James Bridie had conveyed me through the gloom to see a good rough Scots comic called Georgo West, we returned to the City Chambers and talked with the Lord Provost about the war and the Glasgow folk. (The best story of the day came from the last war. Jock had been awarded the V.O. at the front. They pointed out how delighted his wife must be. "Acli!" ho said, "she doesn't ken it yet. You see, it's no' ma turrn to write.")

Yes, it was a good day, and I like Glasgow, fot.it is friendly and yet has an edge to it. And it was good to see the people at play, enjoying themselves in their own fashion, Avar or no war. But it was better still to see those same folk at work, driving holes in steel and riveting plato to plate, defying the Western Ocean, the submarines and, if necessary, the devil himself,

Clyde Shipbuilders a Greater Than the Might A WARTIME JOURNEY TO GLASGOW AND ROSYTH

forging link by link the old lifeline of our democracy. On the pretty blue paper of-matches they gave me is a fine picturesque civic design in gilt- But all they really want is a' rivet, not in gold, but in what is better —hard, true steel. Having seen ships being built on the Clyde, the next item on the programme of a wartime journey to Scotland was n visit to the Navy. The Firth of Forth was enchanting on the morning, of October*?, 1939. It was all a delicate harmony of fading blues and faintly luminous greys. The sky and the water had been conjured out of one exquisite substance. Thesea air was both strong and sweet. Ihe great Forth Bridge looked a noble worU of art. Here and there, hardly to be discovered against the grey sparkle and blue mist, were a few vague shapes that suggested, just dropped a mere hint or two, that the British Navy had an interest in this locality. Nothing "Soft" I was on my way to Rosyth, which 1 had been told was a very important base. There had been a time, during the later period of the last war, when these waters held the full might of the Grand Fleet, the greatest weight of fighting ships ever known, and far beyond anything we shall know in this war. And now .Rosyt.li, almost forgotten during the years of uneasy peace, had emerged again. So there 1 was. There had always been an idea at. the back of my mind that the Navy did itself very well. No roughing it on land for them. So I expected to find rows and rows of comfortable barracks, magnificent officers' quarters, dining tables glittering with silver, string bands playing selections from "Bitter Sweet." I saw myself sharing sumptuously, if only for a day, in all this, a visiting fighting cock. The minute I was landed at H.Q. I knew I had been all wrong. I never saw a dingier hut. It looked like the quarantine quarters of some forgotten Labour Corps. Bright and busy "Wrens" hurried in and out of shabby cubicles that served as offices, and very important, offices, too. There were no grand barracks, only some scattered tin hutments. "There's a War On" The Officers' Club, where we lunched, with plenty of good fellowship but with precious little good food, was the twin of dozens of ramshackle affairs 1 remember just behind the line in Flanders. The Navy may do itself well in warships at Malta, but not at Rosvth, where everything seems to have been devised to remind you that a war is on and that a great deal of work has to be done. ■ * In a neighbouring hut, not qirite so dingy as "the Vico-Admiral's headquarters because it is newer, but no great shakes even as a hut, I found the Intelligence Department. Do not nsk me how our famous Naval Intelligence works, because 1 do not know.

The office they showed me tooked very little different from an architect's

or a surveyor's, but that, of course, may be just another example of their artfulness. It was in there, however, that I was asked to pass on a message to the public. It is this: The bluejacket is a sociable chap who is glad to be matey when he is on leave Do not ask him questions about his work when you are in public places, because the replies, though apparently innocent enough, may reveal much to the enemy that he is very anxious to know. A hearty chat about depth charges in a saloon bar, with nobody meaning any harm, may yet do Britain a serious injury. After this glimpse of the Intelligence we ran in a car round a lot of corners with armed marines here and there and saw docks and cranes and what looked to my innocent eye like a mass of iron lumber. It was all very quiet and peaceful Nobody seemed to be worrying except the stewardess at the Officers' Club, who had had to make a dish of steak and onions go a powerful long way. So we climbed on to a ship that has an incredible number of people on its books. If you saw them you Would think it was about as big as nine Hoods put together, whereas actually it is a modest little vessel that has not been anywhere in particular for a long time. It is the depot ship to which officers and men who are not in real fighting ships are nominally attached. I smoked a pipe of that excellent Navy tobacco with its commander and told him that ho had the perfect life, for his quarters were fine and snug, the sea breezes blew through his portholes, and yet his sliif) was sensibly immobile, staying in one place comfortably and not lurching and careering nil over the place. Nightmare Vessels He regretted its immobility and declared earnestly that he liked ships to bo on the move. If he is not careful I shall pull strings like mad and take his place. That is the naval life for me. What is definitely not the naval life for me or for any seijsible man my size is duty in a submarine. I explored a submarine and my worst suspicions of these nightmare vessels were immediately confirmed. I felt like a mouse that had wandered into the works of a clock. Even the vcrv ladders are only half the usual

width. It is just as if all the machinery in a large factory had been packed into a drainpipe and then some lunatic had arranged for a number of . men to go and live in it. What it feels like to be inside such a monster when it is deep in the sea ] cannot imagine, but as it was, with the good air not very far away, although you could not smell it for the reck of oil, that submarine frightened me. Yet the "Number One," who hardly looked more than a boy, poked about in this smelly inferno as if he were happily at home'. I suspect that the secret of the submarine's attraction to these cool lads is that it has more complicated gadgets to the square yard than anv other of our unpleasant devices.

It must "be a gadgeteer's heaven. But for any sensible and rather pluiiip man who likes a bit of room and hates living inside clockwork, even a mere visit to a submarine is the beginning of nightmare. " - : • If anybody wants to keep me in order let him have me press-ganged to the Navy and then, whisper, "What about submarine duty?" But a depot, ship now —well, that is a different story. And that is all I can say aboui •Rosytli. Ido not believe it will ever hear a nice Marines' band. It is a fraud. You must go. there to work. And vet though it, seemsy so prosaic there'float about it, like the tangles of sea mists along the Forth, hints and rumours of- a vast adventure,' another chapter in the epic of the Royal Navv.