7 JULY 1917, Page 11

Dr. Addison gave a remarkable account on Thursday week of

the work of the Ministry of Munitions. Viewed merely from the statistical point of view, his review of our productive achievements was most impressive. Thus the capacity for the production of high explosive in March, 1917, was more than four times that of March, 1916, and twenty-eight times that of March, 1913. The result was that at the end of the first nine weeks of the spring offensive our stock of shells bad fallen by no more than seven per cent. The output of rifles had increased tenfold ; our capacity for the pro- duction of machine-guns weekly was more than twenty times greater than it was two years ago ; while the production of aero- planes for May was more than twice that of December and four times greater than that of May, 1916.