test conception of what an expansion of
output of munitions on a huge scale involved. Still less were staff
officers in general and officers of other branches of the service in a
position to interpret the situation correctly. They did not realize
that before you can bring about any substantial increase of production
in respect to shell, or fuses, or rifles, or machine-guns, or
howitzers, you have to provide the machinery with which the particular
form of war material is to be manufactured, and that you probably have
to fashion some extensive structure to house that machinery in. It
takes months before any tangible result can be obtained, the number of
months to elapse varying according to the nature of the goods.

Dwellers in great cities will often note what happens when some
ancient building has been demolished by the house-breaker. The site is
concealed by an opaque hoarding. For months, even sometimes for years,
nothing seems to follow. The passer-by who happens to get an
opportunity of peeping in when some gate is opened to let out a cart
full of debris, only sees a vast crater at the bottom of which men,
like ants, are scurrying about with barrows or are delving in the
earth. All the time that the ground is being cleared and that the
foundations are being laid, those out in the street know nothing of
what is going on, and they wonder why some effort is not made to
utilize the vacant space for building purposes. Then one day, quite
unexpectedly, scaffolding begins to rear its head. A few weeks later
bricklayers and their work begin to show above the hoarding; and from
that moment things at last are obviously on the move. The edifice
grows from day to day. Within quite a short space of time workmen are
already putting on the roof. Then down comes the scaffolding, windows
are put in, final touches are given to the interior, and, within what
seems to be no time at all from the day when the scaffolding first was
seen, the building is ready for occupation. So it is with the
manufacture of munitions--experience in the United States in
connection with output for us and also in connection with output for
Russia, was exactly the same as in the United Kingdom in this respect.
An interminable time seems to elapse before the output begins; but
once it has fairly started it grows by leaps and bounds.

At the time of the Newcastle oration, and for some months
subsequently, the work of expansion on a colossal scale which the
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