MAKING GOOD

Timaru Herald, Volume CLIII, Issue 22475, 9 January 1943, Page 5

MAKING GOOD

America’s Part In War

Arsenal Of Democracy

By Telegraph—N.Z. Press Assn.—Copyright WASHINGTON, January 7. In a personal message to Congress, President Roosevelt said: “You are assembling in one of the great moments of the history of the nation. Last year was most crucial for modern civilisation. The coming year will be filled with violent conflict, but with high promise of better things. We are flying as much lend-lease to China as ever traversed the Burma Road. The period of our defensive attrition is passing. Our aim now is to force the Japanese to ftght. As a sequel to hard experience in battle we are diverting portion of our tank-producing capacity to the new deadly field weapons, especially self-propelling artillery. “Members of services want the right to work, plus assurances against the evils of all major economic hazards, assurance extending from the cradle to the grave. This great Government must provide such an assurance.” America is now producing military planes at the rate of over 66,000 a year. This is one of the items in the figures of America’s production given by Mr Roosevelt.

Marked Increases

“We produced,” said the President, “about 48,000 military planes —more than the aeroplane production of Germany, Italy and Japan put together. Last month we produced 5500 military planes, and the rate is rapidly increasing. Furthermore, as each month passes, there are changes of our types, which must take more man-hours to make, and they have more striking power. In the production of tanks we have revised our schedule—and for good and sufficient reasons. We produced 56,000 combat vehicles, such as tanks and self-propelled artillery. We produced 670,000 machine-guns and 21,000 anti-tank guns.” These two latter figures, the President said, were each six times larger than those of 1941. Small-arms ammunition produced in 1942 totalled 10,250,000,000 rounds, and artillery ammunition 181,000,000 The latter figure was 12 times greater than that of 1941 and 10 times greater than the total United States production in the first world war.

“The arsenal of Democracy,” declared Mr Roosevelt, amid loud cheering, "is making good.” He added: “While we have been achieving this miracle of production during the last year our armed forces have grown from a little over 2,000,000 to 7,000,000. In other words, we have withdrawn from the labour force and farms some 5,000,000 of our youngsters. Our farmers have contributed their share to the common .effort by producing the greatest quantity of food ever made available in a single year in all our history.” President Roosevelt’s address to Congress caused..the most favourable impression in Congress circles of any he has delivered since his war message in 1941, states a message from Washington. Although the Republicans were naturally more conservative than the Democrats they guardedly praised it.