BRITISH ARTILLERY.

Taranaki Herald, Volume LXV, Issue 145997, 1 December 1917, Page 7

BRITISH ARTILLERY.

TO BE FURTHER INCREASED. In a speech on October 5 Mr. Churchill, Minister of Munitions, reto the manufacture of munitions. He said that we had not yet realised the resources of this wonderful island, and w© had nob yet developed and mobilised the giant latent strength of the great race to which wo had the honour to belong. Next year, if the war should be prolonged—which God forbid—our armies would be stronger, than ever. They would be better supplied than ever. In the great battle of Hie Somme in 1916 the British artillery fire was utterly unprecedented and unexampled in the history of war. During the 23 weeks of the present offensive the tonnage of shells hurled at the German positions had. in spite of the submarines, been double the tonnage averaged during the whole of the Somme battle, and during the last and culminating week the tonnage fired in those operations was four times the average of tho then unprecedented quantity which was brought into action in the’ battle of the Somme. OUR UNIQUE POSITION. Next year—he.could speak with con-, fidence " unless some altogether extraordinary development should take place, which there was no reason at present to apprehend—the power of the British artillery, the dreaded British artillery—he thought he- might without boasting say the world-famous British artillery—would undergo another great lift, in spite of the submarine. (Cheers.) That was only typical of the advance which was possible in all our war-mak-ing capacities. Wo occupied u unique position in the world. Among all our Allies in the western world we were tho most experienced. Among all pur Allies in the European theatre we were the least exhausted. To tell the truth we were not exhausted at all. (Cheers.) We stood between the old world and the new; we bridged the gap of sea ; we held the fort, before the reinforcements, moral and physical, in men and money, in machinery, in inventive ingenuity. which the great Republic of the United States was throwing into the war, could be made decisively effective upon the European battlefield. In the meantime the burden rested on us; it was weighing on us just as in tho first few months of the war the whole strain of meeting the avalanche of a long-prepared, pent-up Prussian aggression. that hideous exhibition of barbarism. fell upon our gallant French Abies. (Cheers.) In this momentous period of the war he appealed to all to pull together. F.very element of strength and resolution which could be incorporated in our national life at this moment must he woven into the effective prosecution of the war. The four democracies of tii«. west—Britain. France, Italy, and the United States—-must pull together and ■nust sustain and encourage the new tfemocracy of Russia. They must rescue the little nations trampled ruthlessly underfoot in the strangle.