May 29, 1936
In discussing the urgent need for creating a Ministry of Munitions [or Ministry of Supply], with a new Cabinet officer at its head, it is necessary first of all to emphasize the fact that the British Navy stands in an entirely different position from the Army and the Air Force. The Navy is already upon a world scale, enjoying parity with the United States, and incomparably superior in size and quality to the navies of any two European Powers. The Admiralty have their own arsenals and dockyards, and have maintained permanent relations with the armament firms upon which they have been accustomed to rely. There is thus no difficulty in maintaining the Navy, and even in expanding it very considerably, without doing more than open out its existing sources of supply. The maintenance or increase of British naval power is therefore solely a question of money, and the House of Commons is eager to vote for this purpose any sum, however vast, that His Majesty's Government may ask of them. This main bulwark of our strength being thus in a condition to withstand whatever perils the present and immediate future may bring, we are able to discuss with more freedom the totally different and far less satisfactory conditions which prevail in the Army and the Air Force.
The Army requires a very large emergency supply of all kinds of munitions and equipment in order that its reserves may be ample. The Air Force is in the process of being approximately tripled. Here is an enormous expansion which throws the greatest strain upon our manufacturing resources. But quite apart from these immediate needs lies the far greater task of organising British domestic industry so that it will be capable of casting the whole of its immense and flexible power into the channels of war production, assuming that a grave need should arise. In this third case it is not a question of interrupting to any large extent our very active peace-time trade. We have to make our industries what may be called 'ambidextrous,' so that almost every workshop is prepared not merely on paper, but with the proper appliances, to be turned over to war production in the last resort. This task has already been achieved with wonderful efficiency throughout Germany and the German example has been, and is being, followed to a very large extent in France, Italy, Russia, and many smaller countries.
There is no lack of money. The British finances so carefully restored by the Chancellor of the Exchequer are certainly capable of bearing a far greater strain than those of any other country in the world except the United States. The Government have committed themselves to a programme of rearmament which may well cost several hundred millions sterling in the next few years, and Parliament stands ready to vote these sums the moment they are required. The difficulty is not to get but to spend the money. Owing to the great neglect shortsightedness, and procrastination of the last two or three years, it is only possible to broaden the supplies for the Army and the Air Force gradually and slowly. Increasing paper programmes is useless; for the contractors can only earn a fraction of the payments on the existing Government orders. How can this be speeded up? How, besides, can the industries be adapted to meet a war need? Here are the two problems which await the exertions of a Ministry of Munitions.
In a long peace, when the needs of our small Army and modest Air Force were static and largely a matter of routine, their supplies might well be entrusted to the branches of the War Office and Air Ministry concerned. But when expansion on the present scale is urgently required, when a process of adapting the whole industry of Britain to an alternative purpose is imperative, then the problem is no longer one which Service Departments, with their officials, however faithful and zealous, can be expected to cope. Nor is it a problem which should burden the Secretaries of State for War and Air. They should concern themselves with the efficiency and improvement of their respective forces. They must entrust to business men and manufacturers the huge, complicated operation of production. It is no longer a departmental question, but national, industrial and economic.
This is not a process which can be achieved piecemeal. To throw the burden upon the newly appointed Minister for Co-Ordination of Defence [Sir Thomas Inskip] in addition to his prime duties, would be unfair to the man and disastrous to the job. For this Minister to rush around presiding over a series of disconnected inquiries into the hundred and one thorny problems which demand attention in the strategic and supply spheres would result in nothing but confusion and futility. The first lesson of the war, and even indeed of all very large transactions is, that a proper organisation must be created at the summit which covers the whole ground and gradually extends its control in all necessary directions. No human brain, not that of Napoleon himself, could deal directly with the innumerable complications of modern munitions production.
The first step is to bring into being a composite brain twenty times as comprehensive and untiring as that of the most gifted and experienced man. A dozen, perhaps, of the best business men, manufacturers of the new generation in the country, should be formed without delay into a Munitions Council. Each one should have his sphere assigned-design, guns, projectiles, explosives, raw materials, steel, etc.; each denoted by a letter of the alphabet. By ringing the changes upon these letters committees can be formed exactly adapted to handle any particular matter, while the general movement of business is held firmly together by means of a 'clamping committee' and sustained by a strong cadre of Civil Servants. Such a body once brought into being would be able to take over rapidly and by instalments all the existing supply staffs and duties of the War Office and Air Ministry; and developing as it progressed its own machinery, would very soon impart a general movement to the whole process of re-equipping our expanding forces and adapting industry to its war alternatives.
Up to the present the Government have refused to take these steps. They find innumerable excuses for delay. They admit that the necessity may be forced upon them. Meanwhile they remain in a state of indecision. This cannot last. In six months or less when it is realised that all their existing programmes, except the naval programme, are falling hopelessly into arrears, and as the public anxiety grows, they will be forced to do what they should do now, what indeed they should have done a year ago. The more time they waste, the worse our plight will be, and the more violent will be the transition from one system to another. The ordinary peace-time methods cannot accomplish the work declared to be necessary. There is no need to pass at a bound to wartime conditions-it is neither necessary nor indeed possible. But what is needed is not only a new organisation, but a new atmosphere. Many intermediate states are possible between the humdrum of peace and the fearful frenzy of war. There is no need to disturb the vast mass of British industry. We should set up a new organisation of a Ministry of Munitions and declare a period of Emergency Preparation.[3]