Untitled

Taranaki Herald, Volume LXIII, Issue 144783, 13 September 1915, Page 2

Speaking at the Trades Union Congress at Bristol on Friday Mr. Lloyd George said that the Government had established sixteen national arsenals and was establishing eleven more. To man these 80,000 skilled and 200,000 unskilled workers were required. The statement' made by Mr. Mr. Lloyd George in the House of Commons on July 28 somewhat amplifies this information. The Minister for Munitions then informed the House that two methods had been adopted for increasing the supply of munitions. First, all over the country the engineering shops in various areas were co-operat-ing in the work and this was being done under the management of. local boards of business men. Thus all the existing resources of the country had been mobilised. In addition to this the Government had erected sixteen national factories in' suitable places, for which ■ the State would provide the machinery and labour. They also would be under the control of local boards of managers. Mr. Lloyd George ' then went on to say that after a conference at Boulogne with distinguished artillery officers from the French and British Army it had ben decided to nut up ten large national establishments in addition to the sixteen already referred to. The great difficulty to be met was the provision of machine-tools—lathes and so’ forth—to produce the guns and shells. AH the tool-making establish- . ments in the country had been impressed into this work, which would naturally take some time. We thus see that the production of munitions, which has been going on at high pressure since the beginning of the war, will in a short time be almost incredibly increased. We may therefore suppose that any possible shortage of rifles, machine-guns, bombs and shells will he amply provided against. The supply already should bo large, hut it will ' daily be increasing by leaps and bounds.

A special correspondent of the Daily Mail, Mr. W. Beach Thomas, furnished nis paper recently with a list, compiled on the Continent from the best available figures and checked and counter-checked in every way from both public and private information, of the enemy casualties during the present war up to the end of June. The figures are astounding, and if the Allied casualties are added it is found that Europe has already lost, in killed and wounded, over ten million men. The Gorman casualties wore estimated at 1,636,000 killed, 1,880,000 wounded, and 490,000 prisoners, a total of 4,006,000. The Austrian figures were 1,710,000 killed, 1,885,000 wounded, and 810,000 prisoners, making a total of 4,376,000. The Turks had lost 110,000 killed, 140,000 wounded, and 95,000 prisoners, or a total of 345,000. The proportion of killed to wounded seems extremely high, but Mr. Beach Thomas was assured that it was correct. The French and British, he says, have the highest proportion of wounded to killed, but it never rises as high at 2 to 1 (the ratio used to be reckoned ae 4 or 5 to 1), and there axe hospital records to prove this. Mr. Beach Thomas did not give the Allied losses, but said they were much smaller. British casualties, naval up to July 20, and military up to July 18, totalled 330,995, of whom 61,384 were killed, 63,885 missing, and 196,620 wounded. The losses all round in the last two or three months must'have added greatly to the figures, and if the wax continues, for another year there will apparently bo few fit men loft to cany it on beyond that.