The Birmingham age-herald., 1915-12-21
MUN|T|ON SHORTAGE
 RELIEVED, DECLARES DAVID LLOYD GEORGE
Minister of Munitions, How ever, Makes Plea for More Men-Needed to
 Operate Factories

London, December 20.-David Lloyd George, minister of munitions, gave an account of his stewardship in the House of Commons tonight. Beginning with the
 oft-repeated story of the insufficiency of and the history of the estab- lishment of his department to
 remedy the situation the minister grad
 ually warmed to his subject and reached
 the climax with the declaration that the success of the allies in the war depends on the attitude of organized labor
 whether it will allow the government to recruit a sufficient number of skilled
 men for the factories which the munitions
 department has brought into being.
 we want S0.OoO skilled men and from
 new factories" he said 'We must re-
 duce the proportion of our orders which go abroad and develop our home re-
 sources Upon the supply of labor de-
 bends, I think, our success in this war.
 Upon this depends whether we can re-
 duce the cost of the war by scores of
 millions of pounds.
 Upon this depends whether we can SUD-
 ply our troops with the right sort of
 guns and enable them to make next years campaign success. Here only organized labor can help us. We have done our best to get skilled labor by the system of munitions volunteers. It is no use my going into the question of why we got only 5000 or coco men, al-
 though that story may have to be told later
 The question depends on organized la bor Unless it allows us to put unskilled the wnrlx which hitherto a
 been the monopoly of skilled labor, we cannot perform this task. There can be only one appeal, namely. to patriotism Victory depends upon this. Hundreds of thousands of precious lives depend on labor's answer.
 Tt is question whether we are going to bring the war to an end in a year, or finger along in the bloodstained path
 Labor has the answer"
 Earlier in his speech, MT Lloyd-George admitted that there was bad shortage ir the British munitions supply in the first year of the war, but declared that the present situation was quite a different matter. Last May the British were turn ing out only 2500 high explosive shells
 daily against the Germans quarter of a
 million.
 Here is the situation now. he said "The quantity of shells fired in the re- cent September operations were enor nous. The battle lasted days, even weeks yet there was no shortage of shells. This was the result of four months careful husbanding. Yet we replaced the whole amount in a month and hope soon to be in position to replace like quantity in week."
 Without giving definite figures the min- ister forecast the output of many guns .ot the largest size and later declared that the output of machine guns had increased fivefold since June and the output oi hand grenades fortyfold. while more trench mortars were produced every fort night than in the entire first year of the war. Continuing, he said:
 There have been other deevlopments of our work which dare not men, ton. There has been valuable ex- ! perimental work of a kind better not discussed. As to explosives, we shall be able to continue to supply ourselves and our allies
 As to economy, I may cite as an example new contracts for gun am munition which is the principal item of cxpenditure-the cost of 18-poundeI sine ills has been reduced 40 per cent | and of 4.5-inch howitzer shells 30 per cent. s 'It is too early to talk of the danger ! of over production. In the last great ! battle, although there was tre- mendous accumulation of ammunition the generals stated that with thrice ] the quantity of ammunition they would have achieved 20 times the re- suit. Two hundred million pounds, ol
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