REARMAMENT IN BRITAIN

Southland Times, Issue 23734, 4 February 1939, Page 5

REARMAMENT IN BRITAIN

Service Departments

Commended

REPORT BY PANEL OF INDUSTRIALISTS

(British Official Wireless)

(Received February 3, 5.5 p.m.) RUGBY, February 2.

In a letter to the Prime Minister (Mr Neville Chamberlain) from the panel of industrialists set up to advise about the industrial aspects of rearmament which Mr Chamberlain read in the House of Commons, a number of important statements are made on the progress of rearmament. The panel declares that the service departments, supported by the Treasury, are rapidly accomplishing a very difficult task of great complexity with efficiency and foresight, even to the extent in some cases of establishing new industries in the country. It feels that the magnitude of the effort being made is not sufficiently realized by the country as a whole. Discussing the deficiencies which were found to exist in the defence equipment of the nation at the time of the crisis in September, the panel says that on the figures submitted to it it feels that most of these gaps have been filled or are being filled as rapidly as possible. The panel is satisfied that the wholehearted co-operation o r industry in the rearmament programme has been forthcoming and cites as an example the close co-operation between the Air Ministry and the aircraft industry, as a result of which there has been so marked an increase in the rate of production of aircraft.