MACHINE GUNS.

Wanganui Herald, Volume L, Issue 14697, 31 August 1915, Page 4

MACHINE GUNS.

Thu reply of ihe Minister of Defence to Mr Louis Cohen’s inquiries about machineguns was hot very satisfactory, indicating aa it did that the Defence Department was quite helpless to do anything in face of the fact that the Minister had bosti advised the' guns could not be procured at Home or abroad. It did pot ■ seem to .strike the Department that the guns could be made in New Zealand; if it did, the authorities have been lamentably glow in' moving. There are guns in New Zealand which can be used ns models, and drawings of them are in the-Defence Department's archives. We 1 have the plani 'to make them; and the only drawback to it (and this is what seems chiefly to dismay the Minister) is that it will not, make, them so cheaply as the special machinery’used in the Home arsenals. Really, the matter of cost should not have; entered into the, question'. Each gun is said to bo equal to 60 men, and if the guns cost ten or twenty times more to make under, present conditions than would be the, if we had the proper'' machinery, the money would be well - spent. ’ .A;' Wanganui engineer, Mr John Allen, has stated, that he can produce a machine-gun, with his present plant, though at" a heavier cost than at the price they can be mode with special machinery, ; And -the local Patriotic Cbm--mittee has -been, informed., on good authority that, with slight additions to machinery,’ the guns can be made in any of our railway workshops and: at other big manufactories .such ws Price Bros.’ works at the Thames, where railway engines are turned out equal if not superior to' the imported article at the same figure, What reason is there, then, why the hecessarj machinery should.not .be made in the Dominion, if it cannot be procured abroad? The manager of the Walsh Island Government works in New -South Wales states that lie can turn out machine-guns equal to the best made in .England, and if such is possible in Australia it should be possible here. The pity is the' Colonial Governments have so long delayed moving in the matter. Early in the war the Canadian Government realised the importance of arming their men with machine-guns, and acted accordingly. The Minister of Munitions is now taking the matter up in New Zealand, and we hope that prompt steps will ba taken to act on the advice of the conference of engineers to be held at Wellington bn Friday, v - , ,-,