The Joint Committee to inquire into the Government motor depot
and repair works at Cippenham, near Slough, sat for the first time on Friday week. Sir A. R. C. Atkins, late Director of Supplies and Transport at the War Office, said that he had suggested the scheme early in 1916, when storage for the spare parts of Army motors and a central repair shop were greatly needed. Nothing was done till Lord Inverforth went to the War Office in 1917 ; after consultation with independent experts, he sanctioned the proposal, which was confirmed by the Treasury last April. The witness said that the War Office now owned eighty-two thousand motor-lorries and tractors ; when the war began it had only forty-seven, with the right to use seven hundred others in return for a subsidy. Seventy or eighty per cent. of the lorries could be repaired, and the work would take seven years. The figures illustrate the importance of the motor-lorry in modern warfare. Without the motor, the troops would often have starved and the guns would have been silent.
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