Evening Republican, Volume 20, Number 218, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 11 September 1916 — GREAT BRITAIN IS VAST ARSENAL [ARTICLE]

GREAT BRITAIN IS VAST ARSENAL

Besides Government Plants There Are 4,000 Controlled Munition Firms.

3,500,000 ARE AT WORK

High Tide of Output for War Purposes Not Yet Reached—ls Now Armory for Allies—Work of the Scientists.

London. —The enormous stride made by Great Britain toward solving the problem of munitions was made clear In the course of a speech recently delivered by F. Kellnway, parliamentary secretary to Doctor Addison (parliamentary secretary to the ministry of munitions). Mr. Kellaway said the most prominent fact of the war was that the price of victory was unlimited munitions.

“The British army In early days,” he said, “was so out-munitioned that the British soldier ought to have been beaten before the fighting began. But he proved that he was a better fighiing man than the German. What he lacked, In munitions' he made up in devil, in Initiative, and in endurance, “I do not think anything that Germany has ever done equals the work this country has accomplished in the way of industrial organization during the last twelve months. Great Britain, which has throughout been the treasury of the allies, lias now become their armory. There are now scattered up and down the country some 4,000 controlled firms producing munitions of war. ' '. . “The vast majority of these previous to the war never produced a gun, a shell or a cartridge; yet in ten months the ministry of munitions has obtained from these firms a number of shells greater than the total production of all. the government arsenals and great armament shops in existence at the commencement of the war. Increase of Arsenals. “Speaking in the house of commons last year Mr. Lloyd-George startled the country by saying that eleven new arsenals had been provided. Today, not eleven but ninety arsenals have been built or adapted. Our weekly output of .308 cartridge is greater by millions than our annual, output before the war. There is a certain machine gun being produced by the hundred every week In a fuctory ordered, planned and oullt during tlie past twelve months. The output of guns and howitzers has Increased hy several hundred per cent. “We are not yet at the full flood of our output of guns and shell. If the Germans cannot be driven home otherwise, our army will have such a supply of guns that the limbers will touch each other In a continuous line from the Somme to the sea. France, Russia and Italy have been supplied by or through Great Britain with many of the most important munitions of war. Many thousands of tons of steel have been und are being sent to France.

“Our contribution toward the equipment of- the Belgian n’riny has been continuous, and the Serbian army has been re-equipped and restored to a ningnlficent fighting force very largely by the workshops and workers of the United Kingdom. “The labor situation has been to a considerable extent saved by our worn- *»

en. There were 184,000 women engaged in war industries in 1914. Today there are 634,000. The t&tal number of war workers in 1914 was 1,198,600. It has now increased to 3,500.000. Til ere are 471 different munition processes upon which women are now engaged. The women of France are uoing wonders in munition making, but our women munition workers beat the world.” Work of the Scientists. Referring to glass Mr. Kellaway said: “The problem facing the government is, first, to discover the formula of glasses, and having discovered it, to establish the industry. It is fortunate that in this crisis we have available a few scientific men who have been working for years almost without recognition, and we have also institutes such us the Imperial college at South Kensington and the National Physical laboratory at Teddington. The government went to these men and asked them to discover the formula used by the Germans in their production of optical and chemical glass. “These British scientists, after a few weeks experiments, discovered many of the formulae, and it then became possible to begin manufacture on a

commercial scale. The result was that within a year after the outbreak of 'war the output of optical glass in this country was multiplied four and a half times. It has now increased to fourteen times the output previous to the war. and there Is good ground for saying that by the end of the year it will have multiplied twentyfold. “The ministry of munitions has built, or is building, housing accommodations tor 66,000 persons, and canteens and mess rooms in munition works uow provide decent accommodation, where 500.000 workers take their meals every day. “For a long time our antiaircraft gunners have been crying out for an Improved height finder for. Zeppelins, the existing height finders being slow, clumsy and having a margin of error of hundreds of feet. You will realize how that handicapped our gunners In their attempts to bring down Zeppelins. ■" “Three men set to work on the problem, and in two or three months they produced a height finder which gave rapidly and exactly the height of a Zeppelin. It is an Important discovery, hut the problem is onty one of hundreds which are continually cropping up."