AMERICAN PREPAREDNESS

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume LXXXI, Issue 19049, 30 June 1924, Page 5

AMERICAN PREPAREDNESS

INDUSTRIAL MOBILISATION TEST. REMARKABLE RESULTS, On April 7 the Washington correspondent of the London Morning Post wrote as follows to his paper:— “A new kind of war game was played in this country yesterday. To prove how quickly there could be industrial mobilisation on a declaration of hostilities, plans had been drawn up by which on receipt of instructions from Washington, some of the most important manufacturing concerns would immediately drop the work on which they were then engaged, and at once proceed to carry out contracts previously entered into. These contracts were drafted in proper legal form, and in every essential they were the same as they would be in case *of actual war.

“Yesterday morning the War Department sent telegrams to the officer in charge of New York, informing him of a declaration of war against ‘Brobdignag and Erewhon’—which at once started the machinery. Telegrams and telephone messages were sent to 125 industrial plants instructing them to begin work at once one contract numbered so and so. Before noon 75 concerns reported that all commercial work had ceased and that the entire force was engaged on Government contracts. The supplies contracted for included 550,000 explosive shells for 1 seventy-fives, ’ 50,000,000 rounds of small arms ammunition, 500 Liberty engines, shell cases, fuses, range-finders, and other ordnance accessories. Small arms ammunition under contract would be completed to replenish army reserves, but other work was stopped when it was seen that the mobilisation was a success.

“Later army officers and others concerned held a pow-wow, and, while it was agreed in the main that the experiment was satisfactory, in some respects it was found defective, and it was agreed that the organisation must be improved. It was shown, among other things, that it is necessary for factories that can produce munitions to keep in touch with men of special skill required to put their plants on a war basis when the emergency arises. “Yesterday’s game was confined to factories in the vicinity of New York. Next September the same thing will be done on a larger scale, so as to demonstrate the capacity- of the country to turn itself into a war factory overnight.”