Page:"The next war"; an appeal to common sense (IA thenextwarappeal01irwi).pdf/135

 machine-factories into munitions factories. England went on for nearly two years with a business-as-usual policy before she learned she had better make munitions her sole business. There can be no such dalliance in the next war. “It will not be declared; it will burst.” Upon the promptness and speed of the initial thrust may depend victory—then or later. Not only must the magazines be always full, the tanks and aeroplanes always in complete commission, the gas retorts always charged; but you must have your factories always ready for an immediate change. You must be prepared at the shortest notice to turn your dye-and-chemical works into poison gas works, your sewing-machines and type-writer factories into factories for shell-parts—and so on through a thousand industries. This requires an industrial readjustment obviously expensive, still more subtly expensive.

When the war comes, you start war-work not desultorily as in 1914, but full speed from the mark—not at a five per cent scale gradually increasing, as in 1914, but as near as possible to a one hundred per cent scale. Your whole population has been mobilized, perhaps partly trained, in advance. Your young woman knows her place in the factory and reports at once to the foreman, just as your young man knows his place in the ranks and reports at once to the sergeant. The process of turning the whole national energy from wealth to waste begins at once, full power. The next war may be shorter