Artisans in Uniform
The Report of Sir William Beveridge's Committee on Ski11:4 Men in the Services brings home a claim on our limit. resources of industrial skill for which it is certainly imperatn to make due allowance. With the roo per cent. mechanisation of war, there has arisen in all three fighting services a heavy demand for technicians within the ranks who can cope with the incessant task of grooming and repairing the war-machine while in use. Unless skilled men in large numbers are availat in uniform for this work, the danger is (the Report characterise it as " the future danger against which it-is most important provide ") that " the machines on which the lives of fighting men and the safety of the country depend may have to in entrusted to hands insufficiently skilled, under inadequa supervision." The Army is praised for the economy with whit it utilises skilled men, and for the success with which it expands its resources by dilution and training—a success facilitated. course, by the power to order men to go where they are need and the absence of the endless obstacles created in civilian if by questions of wages and craft-demarcation. About the portance of its main claim there is no reason to suspect Committee of exaggeration. The army repair-service is. amo the strongest features in the German Army—one to which great deal of its success in this war has been due. If they find the men, we can and must. . But it will only be possible if outside the Forces, factory-dilution is carried much farther.
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