a very great trade with other
countries in the production of munitions of war. These are the
advantages and disadvantages. Still, knowing these things and taking
them all into account, the surplus of our engineering resources
available for the materials of war is undoubtedly greater than that of
France, and if we produce these things within the next few months as
much as they are likely to produce the Allies would not merely equal
the production of the Central Powers, but they would have an
overwhelming superiority over the enemy in the material essential to
victory. That is the first great fact I would like to get into the
minds of all those who can render assistance to the country.

Germany has achieved a temporary preponderance of material. She has
done it in two ways. She accumulated great stores before the war. She
has mobilized the whole of her industries after the war, having no
doubt taken steps before the war to be ready for the mobilization of
the workshops immediately after war was declared. Her preponderance in
two or three directions is very notable. I mention this because it is
essential they should be understood in inviting the assistance of the
community to enable us to compete with this formidable enemy. The
superiority of the Germans in material was most marked in their heavy
guns, their high explosive shells, their rifles, and perhaps most of
all their machine-guns. These have turned out to be about the most
formidable weapons in the war. They have almost superseded the rifle
and rendered it unnecessary.

The machinery for rifles and machine-guns takes eight and nine months
to construct before you begin to turn a single rifle or machine-gun.
The Germans have undoubtedly anticipated the character of the war in
the way no other Power has done. They realized it was going to be a
great trench war. They had procured an adequate supply of machinery
applicable to those conditions. The professional man was essentially a
very conservative one--(hear, hear)--and there are competent soldiers
who even today assume that his phase is purely a temporary one, that
it would not last long, and we shall be back on the old lines.

I have no doubt much time was lost owing to that opposition. The
Germans never harbored that delusion, and were fully prepared to
batter down the deepest trenches of the enemy with the heavy guns and
high explosives, and to defend their own trenches with machine-guns.
That is the story of th