THE ". SPEEDER-UP."
ALL fair-minded readers of Mr. Lloyd George's speech in the- Hou'se of- Commons on Monday will admit; we think, that when Mr. Asquith appointed Mr. Lloyd George as Minister of Munitions h© put the right man • in the right place. What was needed fear the production of munitions on anything like the scale required anti tremens dous stimulation. This stimulation has been supplied by Mr. Lloyd George's intensely active; or,'if one prefers to'put it so, feverish and mercurial, mind. Ha envisages a problem of enormous size and complexity at one sweep ; he can describe its magnitude and significance in glowing 'words which make men's 'hearts beat faster and their resolution harden to accomplish things which once seemed impossible. Mr. Lloyd George is, in' fine, the beat speeder-up in the country. his only to be expected that the qualities of a speeder-up should exist to the exclusion of some other qualities which ' require a quieter habit 'of mind, more precision, and perhaps' closer and narrower views. Mr. Lloyd George is, in fact, the prophet,' in the old Hebraic sense, rather than the' adraimstrator. But it was just in this respect that Mr. •Asettiith in appointing Mr. Lloyd ' George chose so wisely. A man was needed at the new Ministry who should take the industrial community by the shoulders and simply shake it out of its old methods. He must also be a man who recognized the necessity of surrounding himself with hard-thinking business men and organizers and of delegating -administrative tasks to them. These conditions Mr. Lloyd George has satisfied to admira- tion. His achievement during more than six months has been a triumph of speeding-up. His success was indeed almost certain from the first,. because there is not a man in the country who is more bent' on winning the war than Mr. Lloyd George. He is a man for the time being, as he ought to be, of one idea. This war, as Mr. Lloyd George said is a war of mechanical preponderance. The side which brings a superior mechani- cal apparatus to bear at a particular point goes forward ; i the side which is found wanting in mechanical supplies has to fall back. 'Tho Germans with their uncompromising logic had foreseen this, if not to the full extent of its appli- cations, at all events far mere thoroughly than any other Power. The French, with their lively ways of thinking, recognized the truth very early, and Britain followed very slowly. What we stint in materials we squander in life. That, in Mr. Lloyd. George's words, is the one great lesson of the war. Our British authorities thought so conservatively that they continued to manufacture more shrapnel than any other kind of shell some time after it was evident that the German successes were being won by large guns and high explosives. We were behindhand, again, in recognizing the huge importance of machine guns. A British battalion at the beginning of the' War had two machine guns, a German battalion sixteen. As an example of the importance of machine guns, Mr. Lloyd George referred to the German-defence of an important position for weeks against a very considerable French army by means of forty to fifty machine guns. Those guns were manned by only ninety inen. But of course, even when the exact nature of our wants was admitted, the industrial resources of the country were found to be utterly unequal to producing the now kind of ammunition and the new guns on an adequate scale and quickly enough. What has been done by the eminent engineers and men of busine under the general stimulation of Mr. Lloyd George since the Ministry of Munitions was created makes a marvellous story. When we reflect that last Mayi the deliveries of high explosives were only sixteen per cent. of the promises;
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we can imagine the extent of the reorganizatiOn that was necessary. When we reflect, again, that in May the Germans were turning out two hundred and fifty thousand shells a day, most of them high-explosive, and that we were then turning out only two thousand five hundred a day in high explosives and thirteen thousand in shrapnel, we wonder who could have prompted Mr. Asquith to say at Newcastle 'a month earlier that there was not a word of truth in the statements that our movements had been hampered by a lack of shells. One may,. indeed, still tremble in looking back at those hard German thrusts against our exiguous line at Ypres, • and considering the inequality in the supply of munitions. It is marvellous that the " thin yellow line " held. We can never bestow enough honour on those men who miraculously withstood the shock.' The methods of the Ministry of Munitions were radical from the first. They took a census of all the machinery in the country ; they established a metal department to provide and control the raw material of munitions, and this department has greatly • reduced the price of the material ; and they insisted on factories engaged in munitions work sending in weekly reports of their progress. This last point is more important than it might seem. The late Government simply took the word of the contractors that, when an order had been placed, the goods would be delivered. As a matter of fact, that seldom happens. One must worry the contractor to keep him up to time. •Let us add that a contractor's inten- tions are usually excellent ; he may fail through no fault of his own. But in affairs of life and death we cannot afford failure—even with good excuses. The new system of the Ministry of Munitions enabled Mr. Lloyd George to find out why the contracts were in arrears. With help from the Ministry the difficulties could, in the majority of instances, be removed. The deliveries on old orders have improved from sixteen per cent. to over eighty per cent. Other steps taken by the Ministry are better known—the creation of the forty local -Munition Committees, the establish- nient of national factories, and the co-ordination of all other factories which could produce shells or their corn- ponent parts. A few facts indicate the results of the wholesale reorgani- zation. The shells which were fired in the battles of Sep- tember had been husbanded during four months, but they were replaced in a month. Soon a similar quantity will be replaced in .a week. Medium guns and howitzers are in • firma; • but: -the prospect of overtaking the arrears is good. As for large guns, great factories are being erected to supply them. The " heavy siege gun " which we had at the beginning of the war is now the lightest. A new large factory has also been established for the manufacture of . machine guns. The present output of trench mortars equals in a fortnight the whole output of the first year of trench warfare. • The plant for making rifles has also been much extended., but though. it is obviously, necessary for- ever soldier to be armed and to be able to use his xifie adequately, it must be confessed that the more vital need, has been the supply of machine: guns, high-explosive shells, and the right guns for firing them. Mr. Lloyd George , said that more than nfliety per cent. of our casualties were probably caused by machine guns and artillery. Only about five per cent. were caused by rifle-bullet wounds.
The dark spot is the shortage of labour. It could be made 'good if unskilled labour were applied to the less highly skilled jobs, but directly this is attempted " there- is an action to be fought in every workshop." The question must be grappled with and settled if we are not after all to be ruined by the tragic judgment of " Too late I " The only appeal to the skilled workers is the appeal of • patriotism—the appeal which Mr. Stanton made with such overwhelming success at Merthyr. The lessons taught to the country by the Ministry of Munitions will last long after the war. Men who have learnt what can be done by speeding-up will not fall back permanently, we believe, into the old hugger-mugger practices of the days before the war. In those days we were woefully unscientific just because our industries found it easy to prosper up to a certain point in spite of their lack of scientific organization and their absurdly small use of labour-saving machinery. Higher taxation will force a change if nothing else will. But 'this opens large questions which we shall have to deal - with on other occasions.
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