Mr. Montagu, the new Minister of Munitions, gave the House
on Tuesday a remarkable account of the work done for our Army and for the Allies under his Department. It now takes a week to make as many shells of all kinds as were made in the first year of the war. Every month we turn out twice as many big guns as the Army possessed last summer, and that output will be doubled. The pro- duction of field-guns has been multiplied fivefold and is virtually completed. As for machine-guns, in which we were conspicuously inferior to the enemy, we now make in three or four weeks as many as we had in June, 1915. It is very difficult to increase the output of rifles, but we have made thrice as many in the past year as we made the year before. We had three national factories when the war began ; now we have ninety-five. One of these fills twice as much shell as Woolwich. The thirty-two shell factories produce so much light shell that we need no more from America. We shall, of course, save millions by making as much as we can for ourselves and our Allies.
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