economic and
financial effect--and in order to understand the whole depth and
meaning of the problem with which we are confronted I would state the
ultimate victory or defeat in this war--depend on the supply of
munitions which the rival countries can produce to equip their armies
in the field. That is the cardinal fact of the military situation in
this war. (Cheers.)

I heard the other day on very good authority--and this will give the
House an idea of the tremendous preparations made by the enemy for
this war and of the expansion which has taken place even since the
war--that the Central European Powers are turning out 250,000 shells
per day. That is very nearly eight million shells per month. The
problem of victory for us is how to equal, how to surpass, that
tremendous production. (Hear, hear.)

The Central European Powers have probably attained something like the
limits of their possible output. We have only just crossed the
threshold of our possibilities. In France I had the privilege of
meeting M. Thomas, the Under Secretary for War, a man to whose great
organizing capacity a good deal of the success of the French
provisions of war is attributable, and I am very reassured not merely
as to what France is doing and what France can do but as to what we
can do when I take into account what France has already accomplished.

Let us see the position France is in. Her most important industrial
provinces were in the hands of the enemy. Seventy per cent. of her
steel production was in the hands of the enemy. She had mobilized an
enormous army and therefore had withdrawn a very considerable
proportion of her population from industry. She is not at best as
great an industrial country as we are. She is much of an agricultural
and pastoral country. It is true that we have certain disadvantages
compared with France, and they are important. She has not the same
gigantic Navy to draw upon the engineering establishments of the
country. That makes a very great difference. She has more complete
command over her labor. That makes an enormous difference, not merely
in the mobility of labor and the readiness with which she can transfer
that labor from one center to another, but in the discipline which
obtains in the workshops. She has another advantage with her arsenals,
which at the outbreak of war corresponded to the magnitude of her
Army--a huge Army. We had a small Army to provide for. She, in
addition to that, had undoubtedly