"There'll Always Be An England"

To anyone brash enough to accuse corpulent, complacent Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King of diddling & dawdling in getting the Dominion on a war footing, he can truthfully crack back that Canada has just fought out on that issue an election which his Government won by a landslide (TIME, April 8). That, however, was before the Nazis crashed through Flanders, crushed France. Last week the hottest issue in the Dominion was again Government war diddling & dawdling. Only wartime censorship averted open scandal. Items:

Materiel. Not a single Army rifle had been made in Canada up to this week. Neither had the Dominion made a single tank, although one of the Canadian Pacific Railway shops was said to be working on "tank hulls." (The machinery would have to come from somewhere else.)

Last year only 400 engineless war planes were built in Canada. The Dominion is now turning out just 30 of these per week, and $8,000,000 worth of engines are on order in the U. S. for delivery in ten months.

Right after break of war, six major Dominion heavy industries organized Canadian Associated Aircraft Ltd., received $40,000,000 in orders to make engineless planes--Britain to send over the engines. For several months, shops of this combine hurtled to turn out parts but their assembly plants have been unable to get going, stood idle last week for several good reasons. In the first place, specifications were changed so often that today much of the accumulated stores of parts cannot be fitted together into complete aircraft. In the second place, engines from Britain have not arrived. About six weeks ago Prime Minister Mackenzie King ordered such a shipment. They got as far as mid-Atlantic, turned around and rushed back to the beleaguered United Kingdom.

Last week Dominion aircraft production engineers cursed in agreement with Canadian Aviation, which editorialed with discreet understatement: "The unwisdom of gearing most of the Canadian aircraft industry capacity to the British system is now apparent. The realities must be faced. The entire manufacturing plan will have to be overhauled and revised to mesh with American industry. We can thank God for the industrial power and the growing active support of the United States in the hour of direst need."

In Toronto months ago, a plow company was handed an order to make one million shell casings. Up to this week they had not yet been sent specifications.

Six months after break of war, the Government accepted a long-proffered offer by Rogers-Majestic Corp. to convert its plant for production of small arms, parts or "anything that is wanted." Up to this week Majestic had not been told what is wanted.

At break of war Canada had no anti aircraft guns. Two were promptly sent over from England, arrived without ammunition. Last week officials in various Government departments contradicted each other, as to whether or not Canada is now manufacturing anti-aircraft guns.

In Toronto an impression prevailed that Bren machine guns are being rapidly produced by the John Inglis Co. but that they have been discovered to lack certain requisite attachments.

Men. In general Prime Minister Mackenzie King has simply followed such requests and advice as the United Kingdom sent along. London figured all last winter that World War II would be a long-drawn-out deadlock. It would have taken amazing Canadian initiative and daring to get ready for a different sort of war from that the Mother Country was figuring to fight.

The morning war broke, the famed "Canadian Field-Force Plan," drawn up by Major General Andy McNaughton, who is now commanding Canadian forces in Britain, was put in effect by the Mackenzie King Cabinet. It was to "mobilize immediately" 100,000 men. The Cabinet soon discovered that there did not exist in Canada even uniforms or Army shoes for 100,000 new soldiers--much less guns--and anyhow the Mother Country did not think she needed soon all that Dominion man power. Accordingly, Mr. Mackenzie King, just three days after the Plan shifted into high gear, discarded it entirely and explained: "The situation doesn't call for it."

Up to this week Canada has sent overseas her First Division and part of a Second, totaling in all some 27,000 troops. She also has 16,000 men of the Canadian Air Force in the Mother Country with Canadian equipment for but one squadron. Most of the Royal Canadian Navy, which has about 8,000 men, is overseas. At home Canada has an Active Service Force of 65,000, including 11,000 in coast defense.

Money. Last week Parliament voted taxes enabling war expenditures of $900,000,000 for the fiscal year ending next March 31, and everyone in Ottawa expected this figure would be exceeded. Officials uncomfortably explained: "By next March we will have spent more than one billion dollars. That is the equivalent of America spending $11,000,000,000, for the United States is over eleven times larger than Canada and wealthier besides. At the corresponding point in the last war the Dominion had spent only $166,000,000." Canadians, anxious to get on with the war at any price, actually cheered last week's appropriation from their pockets.

Dominion press contributed to waning Canadian complacency. It played small such awkward items as that one Leonard Franceschini, an Italian naturalized a Canadian but considered Fascist, has been one of the Dominion's most successful war-order getters. As the ubiquitous president of the Dufferin Paving & Crushed Stone, Ltd., Franceschini last January got a $3,500,000 Government order to build mosquito boats and in February a $2,000.000 order to turn out shell casings. Three days after Italy entered the war Franceschini was arrested, interned. Government custodians are now trying to run the plants this suspect fifth columnist hastily got together.

Up & down Canada neutral observers found alternate moods of frustration, resolve for redoubled efforts, and a residue of pre-Flanders calm. It may have been significant that the popular war ditty of last week in the Dominion was the brand-new, comfortingly optimistic There'll Always Be An England.

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