BRITAIN’S WAR PRODUCTION

Waikato Times, Volume 129, Issue 21486, 30 July 1941, Page 6

BRITAIN’S WAR PRODUCTION

GREAT W ORK DONE REPLY TO CRITICISM MR CHURCHILL’S SPEECH (Official Wireless) (Received July 30, 11.40 a.m.) I* RUGBY, July 29 "A picture so luridly drawn of the chaotic and convulsive stniffie of the three supply departments, without guidance or design, is one which will no doubt be pleasing to our enemies but happily has no relation to facts." These words occurred early in Mr Winston Churchill's speech on the third day of the debate on production in the House of Commons. Mr Churchill had recalled the speech which he made on January 22, in which he gave in detail the form of supply organisation he proposed to adopt and to which he proposed to adhere. He stated that as •Minister of Defence he had prepared for a War Cabinet general scheme, based on forward programmes of the fighting services, which brought together the whole home munitions production and imports programme, and prescribing the largest reasonable target at which to aim, pointing out that each fighting department in the main had its own chain of factories. Mr Churchill said that except on the fringe of these powerful organisa--tions there was almost no friction or overlapping between one department and another. He shortly reviewed departmental organisation and said: ‘‘We are not a totalitarian State, but we are steadily and, I believe, as fast as possible working ourselves into a total war organisation." Very High Level Dealing with the work of the purchasing commission in the United States, Mr Churchill said it had reached a very high level, and though a year or six months ago there was a lot of trouble and discordances his information was that they had largely died away. The Uniter! States naturally had asked for the fullest and clearest information about the goods which they were supplying and whether there was waste or misdirection. Their criticism was searching and well-informed and it was the Government’s duty to reply to their questions. Turning to home production, Mr Churchill dealt with the allegation of departmental disputes, and said: “All I can say is that for the last four months no question of departmental rivalry or dispute has been brought to me or to the War Cabinet." No Minister Of Production He dismissed the suggestion of the appointment a Minister of Production and stated such to be unnecessary and unworkable. Dealing with the specific allegation that aircraft orders to the United States had not been accompanied by maintenance and ancillary equipment ordered at the same time, so that aircraft were to be seen idle for want of spares, Mr Churchill said: “As far as British aircraft is concerned this is quite untrue. But after the collapse of France aircraft built for French requirements had to be altered before the Royal Air Force was able to use them and new spares had to be ordered. They are practically all now in use.” , Dealing with new aircraft, Mr Churchill said: “I am glad to tell the House that the spring and summer fashions in aircraft this year are further ahead of the contemporary German production than they were last year. The enemy borrowed many ideas from our fighter planes and we borrowed some from him, but in the upshot we confronted him in 1941 with fighter aircraft which in performance, speed, ceiling and, above all, armament, left our pilots with the old and even with an added sense of technical superiority. “Technical superiority in aircraft sometimes meant the adoption of new ideas, even at the expense of numbers of output. The struggle for air mastery requires a vast number, but those vast numbers have not succeeded alone unless the forward and leading types constantly achieve the highest level of enterprise and perfection." Mr Churchill deprecated the use by newspapers of such phrases as, “The general feeling of the House was of grave uneasiness,” when no vote had been taken. Parliament, he said, should be the arena in which grievances and complaints became vocal and the Press should be a prompt and vigilant alarm bell, but ideas should not be spread abroad as to the feeling of the House when its opinion had not been tested by a division. Reply to Allegation Mr Churchill devoted particular attention to an examination of a statement made by Sir J. WardlawMilne that “our people are only working to 75 per cent of the total efficiency.” This statement was taken from the context and conveyed a wrong impression of the speech, but had been circulated over the world. Testing the trutl of the allegation, Mr Churchill said he had tried to find a datum line to find out what 75 per cent represented. He had taken the three months after Dunkirk, which would be admitted as the time when the British people worked to the limit of their powers. The working men and women did not take their clothes off for a week at a time and their output was the utmost limit of their strength. This produced an abnormal inflation of production. Now it is true that we are only working 75 per cent of that. Mr Churchill explained that if such conditions had continued there would have been a crash costing far more in production than the minimum periods of leisure now adopted. He also explained the temporary retarding effect of labour dilution and the permanent diminution because of the dispersal of vulnerable plant to different centres. The latter he illustrated by a Bristol air-

craft firm, which had been dispersed ever nearly 45 sub-centres. “We may suffer and the output be retarded, but we can no longer be destroyed,” said Mr Churchill. Great Increase in Output Mr Churchill gave “facts and figures to show how we have succeeded, by improved organisation and by smoother running of our expanding machinery, in overcoming difficulties.” In spite of troubles and difficulties the Ministry of Supply output in the last three months had been one-third greater than in the three months of the Dunkirk period. He continued: “Though our Navy, Army and Air Force are larger the Ministry of Supply has one-third more people working in its factories and each man is turning out each day on a scale as much as in that time of almost superhuman effort. This despite dilution, dispersion, air raids, blackouts, and all the troubles which I have described. “Let me present the balance-sheet —one-third more workers and onethird more output is quits, but all the adverse factors I have described have scmchow been cancelled out by superior development and organisation. “We have made in the last three months more than twice the field guns made in the Dunkirk three months. The munitions which we are turning out are half as much again and .the combined programme of merchant and naval shipping now in hand is greater than at any period curing the last war. Bombing Attacks Doubled “Since the present Government took over the progress and expansion have been enormous and continuous. Fighter aircraft are at least as much ahead of the Nazis as a year ago and there has been no sacrifice of quality to quantity. As for bombers in British production alone the bomb discharge on Germany has been doubled and in the next three months we shall double it again. The output of warlike stores in this seventh quarter of this war is nearly double the production in the seventh quarter of the last war and equal to that attained in the fourteenth quarter. “Time lost through labour disputes has been much less. Twelve million days were lost in the last war but so far less than 2.000,000 days in this. I received just before coming here today information that at eleven o’clock this morning there is no stoppage of work of any kind arising from any dispute in any part of Britain.” After paying tribute to the Minister of Labour and the great work he is accomplishing, Mr Churchill gave what he described as a “very serious warning.” “There is no doubt temptations to optimism,” he said. “It is a fact that the mighty Russian State, so foully treacherously assaulted, has struck back with magnificent strength and courage and inflicted prodigious and well-deserved slaughter for the first time upon the Nazi Armies. Aid Fro mAmerica “It is a fact that the United States, the greatest single Power in the world, is coming to our aid on a gigantic scale and is advancing in rising wrath and conviction to the very verge of war. It is a fact that German air superiority has been broken and German air attacks on this country have for the time being ceased. “The Battle of the Atlantic, although far from won, has, partly through American intervention, moved impressively in our favour. It is a fact that the Nile Valley is much safer than it was twelve or thirteen months ago. It is a fact that the enemy has lost all pretence of theme or doctrine and has sunk even deeper in moral and intellectual degradation and bankruptcy and almost all his conquests have become burdens and sources of weakness. “But with all this we must not be led for a moment to suppose that the worst is over. The formidable power of Nazi Germany, the vast mass of destructive munitions which they have made, and the courage and skill of their striking forces and the ruthlessness of their centralised war direction, the prostrate condition of so many peoples under the yoke, and the resources of so many countries which have been to some extent available to them, all these restrain and forbid the slightest relaxation. Prepared for Invasion “It would be madness to suppose that Russia or the United States are going to win this war for us. The invasion season is at hand and all the armed forces have been warned. “By September 1 we will have to reckon with a gambler’s desperation. We stand here still the champion. If we fall, all fall together. It will only be superb, intense and prolonged effort by the whole British Empire that the great combination of about three-quarters of the whole human race against Nazidom will come into vehement domination and life. “For more than a -year we have been all alone. All alone we have had to guard the treasure of mankind. Although there have been profound encouraging changes in the situation our responsibilities remain undiminished and we shall only discharge them by continuing to pour out in the common cause the utmost endeavours of our strength and virtue, and if need be proffer the last drop of our heart's blood.” THREAT TO THAILAND JAPANESE PRESS CAMPAIGN (UniteA Press Assn. Klee. Tel. Copyrlg-ht) LONDON, July 29 The Japanese press has commenced a campaign against Thailand similar to the campaign launched in Tokio before the move into Indo-China. The Japanese radio in the past 24 hours has been attacking Thailand. The Japanese allege that British troops are moving toward Thailand, that British warships are patrolling off the Thai coast, that strong pressure is being exerted against the Thai Government, and that British citizens in Thailand are being evacuated to Singapore. Japan is “freezing” Netherlands East Indies assets. The sanctions imposed by the Indies deprive Ja; an of nearly 2,000,000 tons of oil a year.