Grave situation

Munitions minister’s warning

Appeal to the unions

Mr Lloyd George, Minister of Munitions, on Friday visited Liverpool to discuss with employers, Labour representatives and others how the output of munitions of war can be augmented.

In the afternoon he addressed a crowded meeting of employers, chiefly connected with the engineering trades, in the Council Chamber, and made an earnest appeal for the relaxation of trade union restrictions during the war.

If all the skilled engineers in this country were turned on to produce what was required, if every engineer who had been recruited was brought back from the front, and they were worked to utmost limits of human endurance, they would not get enough labour even then to produce all that would be asked for during the next few months.

The lives of our men at the front depended on the amount of war material we were able to equip them with.

Success depended on it, the lives of the men at the front depended on it.

There was no room for ‘slackers’.

Mr Lloyd George concluded by saying: “It ought to be established as a duty, as one of the essential duties of citizenship, that very man should put his whole strength into helping the country through and I don’t believe any section of the community would object to it if it were made a legal right, a duty expected of everyone.”

Mr Lloyd George said to the crowds: “I have come here, not for speech but for business and I shall only indulge in speech to the extent that speaking is the essential preliminary business.

“I placed yesterday before a meeting in Manchester my general views of the position and I have very little to add to what I then said, but I have come here to appeal for the assistance of the men of Liverpool and surrounding districts.

“The situation is a serious one.

“It is as grave a situation as this country has ever been confronted with.

“You need have no special knowledge in order to ascertain that for yourselves.

“A careful, intelligent perusal of the published despatches in the newspapers must have caused you to come to the conclusion that this country is engaging one of the most formidable enemies that it has ever waged war against.

“The issues are great and nothing can pull us through but the united effort of every man in the British Empire.

“If you look at what our brave fellows are doing at the front, you can see the perils there facing them - the trials, the privations - and they are doing it without flinching.

“Never in the history of this country have our men shown greater courage and endurance then that have during this war.

“They have done all you can expect of the mortal man.

“We who are comfortable at home, free from privations, free from danger, let us each of us do his part as nobly as those heroes of ours are doing at the front.

“It would be horrible for us to think that those who fall, fall through our neglect.”