e war for ten months. We assumed that victory
was rather due as a tribute from fate, and our problem now is to
organize victory, and not take it for granted. (Cheers.) To do that
the whole engineering and chemical resources of this country--of the
whole Empire--must be mobilized. When that is done France and
ourselves alone, without Italy or Russia, can overtop the whole
Teutonic output.

The plan on which we have proceeded until recently I explained to the
House in April. We recognized that the arsenals then in existence were
quite inadequate to supply the new Army or even the old Army, giving
the necessary material and taking into account the rate at which
ammunition was being expended. We had, therefore, to organize new
sources of supply, and the War Office was of opinion that the best
method of attaining that object was to work through existing firms,
so as to have expert control and direction over companies and
workshops, which up to that time had no experience in turning out
shells and guns and ammunition of all sorts. There was a great deal to
be said for that. There was, first of all, a difficulty unless
something of that kind was done of mobilizing all the resources at the
disposal of the State. The total Army Estimates were L28,000,000 in
the year of peace. They suddenly became L700,000,000. All that
represents not merely twenty or twenty-five times as much money; it
means twenty or twenty-five times as much work. It means more than
that, because it has to be done under pressure. The sort of business
which takes years to build up, develop, strengthen, and improve has
suddenly to be done in about five, six, seven, or eight months. The
War Office came to the conclusion that the best way of doing that was
to utilize the skill of existing firms which were capable of doing
this work. The War Office staff are hard-working, capable men, but
there are not enough. There is one consideration which cannot be left
out of account, and that is that men who are quite equal to running
long-established businesses run on old-established lines, may not
always be adequate to the task of organizing and administering a
business thirty times its size on novel and original lines.

To be quite candid, the organizing firms--the armament firms--were
also inadequate to the gigantic task cast upon them of not merely
organizing their own work but of developing the resources of the
country outside. They could not command the stock, and su