Every Man May Reach a Star

The final part of the secretary for War's speech, predicting a conflict of 3 years and seemingly one similar to the First World War.  Although victory is predicted at the end of the speech the route to that victory was not the one foreseen in 1939.

The look-out for talent is continuous, and all commanding officers are instructed to search for it.  In this Army the star is within every private soldier's reach.  No one, however humble or exalted his birth, need be afraid that his military virtues will remain unrecognised.

More important, no one who wishes to serve in the Army need consider his status minimized by starting at the bottom of the ladder.  From the ranks we shall mainly derive our junior officers.

For officers in the middle piece and for specialists we have our sources open to us.  We have the Regular Army Reserve.  We have the Territorial Reserve of Officers, and we also have the Army Officers' Emergency Reserve...

It will be unnecessary  to remind the House that it is of the essence of reserves that they re not all used up at once and upon the assumption that this will be a three years' war, many of those with suitable qualifications will in due course have their opportunity.

The splendid women of the ATS, already 20,000 strong, are about to extend their service in replacement of their brothers in arms.

Further openings for the older men will be given in two new directions .... Home Defence Battalions ... and an Auxiliary Pioneer Corps which will take over military pioneer work, both overseas and here.

Pari passu with this pressure upon us to take men in the Army is a pressure in the reverse direction.  We have tried to deal liberally with industry, whose needs we fully recognise just as industry will recognise that an army is a skilled profession and must also, for the safety of the country, have men of specialised knowledge.

Soldiers Back to Industry

We have temporarily released about 10,000 Regular Reservists, and will have shortly in addition have released 12,000 Territorials either temporarily or permanently.  In so far as these releases are helping to accelerate and enlarge the output of our war industries, the loss will have been repaid to us.

Any words of mine that can stimulate and electrify these industies of this country which ar engaged on the output of munitions to out their last ounce into the task of meeting the needs of those in the field and of hastening the day when others can join them will, I am sure, be endorsed by the Minister of Supply.  It is the output of factories making equipment and munitions for the field which will be the ultimate measure of our effort.

It will tell the House what is being done by and for the Army to train as many men as possible o become technicians, and thereby to spare industry the ful drain which would otherwise be made upon it.  The Army is training such men itself.  The Minister of Labour has plans in mind for enabling some of his training establishments to assist in the provision of Army requirements of skilled tradesmen.  With the help of the Minister of Education we hope to use polytechnics, technical schools, and Universities for the same purpose.

Industry will doubtless in its own way be making provision to augment its resources of skilled personnel.  We can look with confidence to these developments.

In 1914 appeals were made for recruits who had neither clothing, nor equipment, nor instructions, nor accommodation, and men were taken regardless of their civilian occupations.  The feat of the first months of the last war we had already achieved in the months of peace preceding this war, and experience had taught us to avoid many of the errors of the last occasion.

Thus at the beginning of September we had in being an Army which was daily acquiring new strength, better cohesion, and greater efficiency.

It has been a privilege to speak of it today and to reveal that while the world was reading of the German advances into Poland British soldiers, resolved to rectify this wrong, were passing silently and in unceasing sequence across the Channel to France.  There we may think of them in positions along a countryside whose towns, whose villages, and whose rivers are familiar to them by memory or by tradition as their own.

How strange it is that twice in a generation men should take this journey and that sons should be treading again upon soil made sacred by their fathers.

They are grumbling about the same things, mispronouncing the same names, making similar jokes and singing songs which seem an echo over the intervening years.  And we may rest assured that they will acquit themselves with the same tenacity, courage and endurance.  However long the struggle and however great the ordeal, they will, as our soldiers did before, take our arms and our cause of freedom to victory.