The Ocala banner. (Ocala, Marion County, Fla.) 1883-194?, 1917-05-11
ENeLAND's GREAT TASK

The sudden declaration of war in
Europe found England almost wholly
unprepared for the great struggle.
Mr. Sidney Brooks, an Englishman.
writing to the National Service Mag
azine, says: Consider, for example,
! the position England found herself in
i'll May, 1915, nine months after the
outbreak of the war. when Lloyd
George was placed in charge Of the
newly established ministry of NUM-
tions, and when it was shown that
the government had to awake to the
supreme urgency of guns and shells.
| Germany, at that time," says Mr..
Brooks, was, turning out some $50 900
thigh explosive shells a day, about one
hundred times as much as we were
producing in Great Britain. She had
begun the war with an immense pre-
Dcnderanca Of material over all the al
| lies combined. She had probably
more machine gune alone than there
were men in the original British ex-
peditionary force which was landed in
France. But, besides this, in the first
| few weeks of the struggle, she occu
pied practically the whole of Belgium
one of the most intensely industrialiZ-
ed countries in Europe and seized all
it's workshops. it's tools, its coal and
iron mines. In addition, she captured
and still holds the cOalfields of north
eastern France, the iron ore districts
on the Lorraine frontier. and the great
manufacturing city OF Lille. The
Pennsylvania of France was in the
enemy's hands and worth more to him
than many army corps. As against
this, pretty nearly half our British
engineers and of our engineering re-
sources were engaged on work for
the navy, and could not, of course, be
switched off to anything else while
our manufacturing facilities for pro-
ducing military material suffced only
| for an army of a few hundred thou
sand. The problem before US was to
expand these facilities at double-quick
speed till they could equip an army
of at least 100000. and we had to
solve this problem at a time when
about a fourth of all the men engaged
in the chemical and engineering
| trades had thrown up their jobs and
enlisted"
Lloyd George, he informs us, found
practically all the firms doing govern
ment work behind in their contracts
and short of labor. He got the trades
unions to change their regulations for
the period of the war. and permitting
unsllilled men to perform the work of
skilled laborers.
Then. after going into somewhat
lengthy details, he tells us:
There are today in Great Britain
more than 1900 firms that before the
war knew nothing of munitions and
never dreamed of making them, and
that are now doing nothing else.
About 100 colossal government plants
have been built One-third of these
factories are national shell factories
for the production of light and me-
dunn shell. organized and managed by
local boards of directors Of the re-
maiHder, II are national prOjectile fac
tories manufacturing heavy shell, Is
are national filling factories and sta
tions for loading gun and trench NOR
tar ammunition and grenades, are
special fuse factories, % are explOs-
i've factories, and others are engaged
in the production Of cartridge cases,
small arms ammunition, gauges and
tools The - heavy shell factories
cover an area of more than 200 acres;
the l6 filling factories and stations,
with more than 1000 buildings, cover
2400 acres: the % explosives facto-
riees cover more than 5000 acres, one
giant among them covering by itself
more than 5000 acres: and in addition
40 warehouses have been built for
filled shells. etc, with a storage area
of more than two million square feet.
Something like 100000 people, of
whom more than million are women,
are employed in munition- making.
Women are engaged at this moment
in more than 500 different munition
processes, and more than $4,000 of
them, thanks to the invention and
ready adoption of innumerable auto
matte devices, manufacture heavy
shells through all their stages. We
are now turning out in eight days as
much 1S-pounder ammunition, in six
days as much field howitzer ammuni-
ton, in week as many medium-sized
shells, and in four days as many heavy
shells as we were turning out in the
2 N-N.