Equipment for the Forces
The Ministry of Supply has come to fill the place it deserves in the public mind since the Withdrawal from Dunkirk. Mr. Churchill has candidly admitted the severity of the losses in guns, tanks, lorries and equipment generally when the men, but not the material, of the B.E.F. were evacuated from France, How far have we gone in replacing that material and how long will it be before we have tanks and other weapons which will enable our men to meet the Germans on something like equal terms? Those are the questions to which everyone longed to hear the answers when Mr. Herbert Morrison made his state- ment on the production of war material last week. He could not, of course, give specific figures, but he said enough to show that the department is really getting to grips with its task. During his seven weeks of office there had been increases in the monthly rate of production of tanks, guns, small arms and ammunition by percentages ranging from 50 per cent. to over 400 per cent. He wisely does not claim that the equipment of the Forces is anything like what it ought to be, but every day shows a rapid improvement. Mr. Morrison takes the view, essential in a crisis such as the present, that it is better to have too much than too little, better to have a hundred standardised guns that will shoot accurately than only twenty with all the "nice little touches" which give joy to the specialist. The result is that at last things are moving quickly.
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