War supply

“ The authorities responsible for war production will inevitably concern themselves with specific commodities of strategic importance which are likely to become difficult to procure in time of war, either through a rise in total demand or because of enemy domination over important sources of supply. ”

“ The profit derived from such supply being enormous, the members of the Family of Nations are not inclined to cripple the trade of their subjects by preventing it. And belligerents want to have the opportunity of replenishing with arms and ammunition if they run short of them during war. ”

“ During periods of peace, there tends to be established an equilibrium of supply and demand between our developed industries and our undeveloped resources. Consequently, when war comes [228] and stimulates enormously all our developed industries—arts, sciences, and manufactures—a correspondingly greater demand is placed upon our natural resources, and their development is proportionately increased.
The result is that the nation as a whole is not impoverished in the least by the burden of armaments, but is rather benefited by their support. ”

“ On the other hand war withdrew workers from constructive industry, and restricted supply at the very time it intensified demand. Every country at war, therefore, sought by means of commerce to relieve the strain on its own resources, importing needed supplies from abroad; each group of belligerents sought to prevent the other group from profiting by this process. The tendency to an increase of imports was accompanied by a tendency to a decline in exports. A country at war could not afford to do business as usual in its foreign trade. ”

“ The efficiency of any arrangement used in war will depend largely on the experience of its working gained in time of peace. Why do we not work the direct system of supply whilst we are at peace so as to familiarise ourselves with the operations it entails before the stress of serious emergency is upon us? There are two reasons. One is, because we have used the permanent base method so long that, as usually happens in such cases, we find it difficult to form a conception of any other. The other reason is that the direct supply method is thought to be too costly. ”

“ The reports from the Ordnance and Mining Bureaus are very gratifying, and the extension of our means of supply of arms and munitions of war from our home resources has been such as to insure our ability soon to become mainly, if not entirely, independent of supplies from foreign countries. ”

“ The dependence of a nation upon the continuation of foreign trade, including the necessity of obtaining new markets and new sources of supply, affects its strength. No State yet has complete autarchy. Thus, there is the necessity of obtaining from foreign sources certain of the raw materials which are indispensable to the war effort. As each belligerent may endeavor to deny sources of raw materials to the other, a portion of the fighting power may be required for trade protection.
(iii) Psychological Factors. The maintenance of a stable morale (page 72) at a high level is a primary concern. ”

“ The centring of manufacture in a single, or a few, great plants carries the additional and chief advantage to Great Britain and the Allies, that no efforts of Germany can now cut off their ammunition supply. The stoppage of this supply has been one of Germany's chief concerns since the war began, and by embargo propaganda here and by the attempt to create sentiment she has tried to cut down the supplies reaching the Allies from this country. ”

“ To the interest in traffic with the neutral States, and indirectly with Germany, was opposed the interest in the still greater trade with our enemies, to which was added, and indeed to a rapidly increasing extent, the supply of war material. ”

“ Nor must it be forgotten that the great demand which has arisen for the supply of munitions, equipment, etc., for the armed forces of this country and of our Allies also, as well as the economic and financial necessity of keeping up the production of manufactured goods, involves the retention of a large number of men in various trades and manufactures, many of whom would otherwise be available for the Colors. ”

“ Thus antecedent to the war, so far as the control of production and distribution of commodities were concerned, we were mainly dependent upon the law of supply and demand with competition and upon repressive laws which should prevent cooperation and allow a free flow of trade. ”

“ Hitherto the approach has been from the particular to the general; the growth of the war economy has been apprehended as the accumulation of those particular concrete problems of supply and distribution that vexed individual departments. ”

“ As has been already observed, the war has left behind it in all countries a great and almost certainly permanent increase in nominal purchasing power. Since the armistice prices have moved upwards and downwards with unprecedented violence ”

“ Permeating the whole document is a fundamental assumption about method: supply-and-demand prices cannot be trusted in time of war to perform their customary function of allocating productive resources, determining production priorities, and distributing the final products amongst purchasers. All these processes must be governed by explicit government decision and administrative direction, inspired always by one firm purpose: the maximum concentration of the nation’s dispersed economic resources in the zone of effective war-making power. ”

“ It will involve the organization and mobilization of all the material resources of the country to supply the materials of war and serve the incidental needs of the nation in the most abundant and yet the most economical and efficient way possible. ”

“ To meet the shortage of supplies from America, due to lack of shipping, the representatives of the different supply departments were constantly in search of available material and supplies in Europe. ”

“ England, for instance, at the outbreak of the conflict could import vast quantities of munitions and supplies from other countries. England, therefore, had a fourth alternative, one denied to us because the struggle is now world-wide. All of the materials of war that we furnish must come from the current energy of our own people. We must ourselves produce these ships, munitions, food supplies, and stocks in the coming months. There is no one else to do it for us. ”

“ The eventual place the American army should take on the western front was to a large extent influenced by the vital question of communication and supply. ”

“ We could hold in Korea by constant maneuver and at an approximate area where our supply-line advantages were in balance with the supply-line disadvantages of the enemy, but we could hope at best for only an indecisive campaign with its terrible and constant attrition upon our forces if the enemy utilized his full military potential.
I have constantly called for the new political decisions essential to a solution.
Efforts have been made to distort my position. It has been said in effect that I was a warmonger. Nothing could be further from the truth.
I know war as few other men now living know it, and nothing to me is more revolting. ”

“ The people pant for peace; should contributions be exacted, as they have hitherto been, at the point of the sword, the consequences may be more dreadful than is at present apprehended. I do not pretend to justify the negligence of the States in not providing greater supplies. Some of them might do more than they have done; none of them all that is required. It is my duty to confide to you, that if the war is continued in this country, it must be in a great measure at the expense of France. ”

“ Was it right to prevent the importation of food into Germany? Why would a nation which manufactured a great deal of war material object to the sale of such material to fighting nations by nations at peace? Show how this rule, if carried out, would have a tendency to make all nations devote too much work to the preparation of war supplies. Show the difference between the British blockade and the sinking of ships by German submarines. Would the blowing up of American factories by paid agents of the German government have been a good enough reason for the United States to have declared war? ”

“ Apart from selling our liquid capital assets in return for foreign goods, and apart from borrowing from foreign countries for the same purpose, our power to provide our own army and navy with all they want and have any surplus over for our Allies has indeed depended entirely on our extraordinary efforts in production—not in normal production, but in war production—and also on the extent to which we have been able to reduce our civil consumption of all kinds. ”

“ And if any one insists on looking at the settlement from the point of view of material advantage—and that point of view will and must be taken—it may be urged, without a shadow of doubt, that any and every nation, the conquerors no less than the conquered, would gain from a reduction of armaments far more than they could possibly gain by pecuniary indemnities or cessions of territory which would leave every nation still arming against the others with a view to future squandering of resources in another great war. ”

“ But in such a crisis as confronts the world to-day, the chief stress of international perplexities arises from the threatened interests of commerce,—the detention by a belligerent of goods claimed as contraband, whether destined to an opposing belligerent or to neutral territory whence transshipment to belligerent territory is considered more than probable; or, again, the question of permitting by a neutral the domestic manufacture and sale or export to belligerents of war munitions. ”

“ National culture, economical progress, and the production of wealth are either paralysed or developed in a wrong direction. Therefore, the more the armaments of each Power increase, the less they answer to the objects aimed at by the Governments. Economic disturbances are caused in great measure by this system of excessive armaments, and the constant danger involved in this accumulation of war material renders the armed peace of to-day a crushing burden more and more difficult for the nations to bear. ”

“ In modern times it is the practice of powerful nations to accumulate arms and munitions [Pg 79] of war on storage in arsenals and naval depôts, so that the necessary supplies for very extended operations, whether of attack or defense, can be procured in a very short period of time. In respect to funds, too, modern nations have a great advantage over those of former days, in case of any sudden emergency arising to call for great and unusual expenditures. ”

“ And a necessary sequence of this preparation for war will be the desire of each nation to be self-sufficient—to produce within itself those materials indispensable for the waging of war. Capital will be wasted because each nation will store up quantities of these materials necessary to war which it is compelled to import from other countries. ”

“ If the British nation chose to bank on the assumption, that it would have the opportunity given it of 'making good' during the drag of war, it should have been made to understand what this entailed in the matter of supplies; and most of all in reserve of officers. All existing forces should at least have been armed with the most modern weapons. There should have been arms and equipment ready for the recruits who would be required, and who were relied upon to respond to a national emergency. ”

“ England, with its blockade against Germany, and Germany with its submarine warfare against British and neutral shipping, developed problems which had to be solved relative to keeping Germany from getting supplies which would enable her to withstand the siege, and also as to the sending of supplies to England, Belgium, France and Russia, and particularly to our own forces fighting with the Allies in France.
A BIG FACTOR IN WAR.
Unfortunate as it may seem, one of the biggest factors in waging successful war is to prevent the enemy from getting food supplies. ”

“ Such vast quantities of manufactured products—machines, munitions, clothing, food, supplies of every sort—were consumed in the war and had to be speedily produced for immediate destruction that for the first time in the history of the world the forces of production at home became of as much consequence for the winning of the war as were the fighting forces at the front. ”

“ The international organization of war industries is reflected in the military instability, that persistently brings back the scales, through all partial decisions and variations, to their true balance, and pushes a general decision further and further into the future. The indecision of military results, moreover, has the effect that a constant stream of new reserves, from the belligerent nations as well as from nations hitherto neutral, are sent to the front. Everywhere war finds material enough for imperialist desires and conflicts ”

“ That the spirit of vindictiveness, of suspicion, of fear and rivalry, engendered by the war, and which the provisions of the Peace Treaties have served to perpetuate and foster, has led to an enormous increase of national competitive armaments, involving during the last year the aggregate expenditure of no less than a thousand million pounds, which in turn has accentuated the effects of the world-wide depression, is a truth that even the most superficial observer will readily admit. ”