Page:Our big guns.djvu/48

( 42 ) Suppose you desire to give an order for several hundred projectiles, say for the 12-inch guns. You must not, if you can avoid it, confine this order to one firm, and especially you must not do so if that firm be a foreign one. You can't expect manufacturers in England, to lay out thousands upon thousands upon special plant, unless you can, from time to time, give them work. Well, this being so, you break up your order into lots, say of 10,000l. to 15,000l. each—not a despicable order—and you make an agreement with the contractors, that the acceptance of the projectiles shall depend upon certain results being obtained on testing. How can this test, be accomplished? It clearly would not do to agree with the manufacturer, to allow him to send say three sample shots, because if these were accepted as sufficient, there would be no guarantee that the bulk was equal to those which had been prepared as samples, and no inspection, or other test, could satisfy you on this point. What course remains? We know of no other, and foreign Governments know of no other, than to say to the manufacturer, you shall deliver the whole lot ordered of you; there shall be selected from the bulk the three worst projectiles (as far as inspection can guide the judgment) of the lot, and on the result of the firing of these the lot shall be accepted or rejected.

I wonder how many here present have any notion of the cost of carrying out this test. Are they prepared to hear that it cannot be made for as little as 2000l.? And I may say that this sum does not allow anything for the wear and tear of the gun, or for the time of the men, and of the officer conducting the experiment.

Assume the test is satisfactorily passed. Even then you have spent over 2000l. in ascertaining whether you should, or should not, accept from 10,000l. to 15,000l. worth of goods. But assume that unhappily the tests are not satisfactorily passed. You have spent your 2000/. without any directly useful result to the nation, although with the indirect one (valuable no doubt) of not issuing to the services, untrustworthy projectiles. And while one's primary and all pervading desire, must be the