(2 of 3)
At the outbreak of the World War, Britain found that thousands of her skilled workers had flocked to the army, leaving raw youngsters to work the vital industries at home. Before the next war, Britain is determined to separate the cannon fodder from the needed workers. Out of a working population of 15,000,000 some 7,000,000 were listed by the Government as employed in "essential" jobs, exempt from voluntary defense duties, and, by implication, from draft. These included some whose possible wartime duties puzzled many Britons: floorwalkers, bulb growers, bookstall attendants, piano polishers, paper hangers, trade-union officials, executives of British Broadcasting Corp. (but not announcers or entertainers).
Workers in nonessential jobs are expected to join the army in wartime or, with members of their families, enroll for civilian defense work—in "decontamination squads," as refugee workers, midwives, etc.—glowingly described to them in booklets mailed last week.
The campaign to enroll volunteers got off with a typically British start, a mass meeting in London's Albert Hall, where 10,000 were addressed by Air Raid Precautions Chief Sir John Anderson. Sir Walford Davies, Master of the King's Musick, led a singsong, urged the audience to sing loud because the rally was being broadcast "and probably Hitler will pick it up." When it came to singing the Lambeth Walk, he insisted on more umph on the "Oi!"
"Our Motto: Defense." Clearly Mr. Chamberlain had swapped the unpopular nag of appeasement for the glossy war-horse of rearmament, a wise move in view of the fact that 1939 is almost certainly a General Election year.
Within two days, four Cabinet ministers went into the countryside to remind Britons, and, by implication, the dictator nations, that the British Empire was still tough. "The British Empire is so strong that it could not be defeated. Let those ponder who say we have grown weary with age and feeble in power. So they thought in 1914. They had a rude awakening," thundered Sir Samuel Hoare, Home Secretary, at Swansea. At Durham, Chancellor of the Exchequer Sir John Simon reminded that the Empire's financial strength is "an important weapon of defense" and at Leeds, Colonial Secretary Malcolm MacDonald keynoted that Britain's "will to victory . . . cannot be equaled." Air Secretary Sir Kingsley Wood opened a new aircraft works at Reading and announced that Britain's aircraft production had doubled during 1938, would probably treble this year. In an article, Earl Stanhope, First Lord of the Admiralty, estimated that Britain will launch a warship a week during 1939.