The Madsen Machine Gun

23 The Madsens [LORDS] Gun. 24 they have seen the gun and tried it, know all about it, and are determined that, notwithstanding its advantages, the loss which might accrue by changing the gun at this period of the war would be greater than the advantage which would be gained, then I, for one, have nothing more to say. It is for them do decide. But I do not think it is right that, in the face of so much expert opinion in favour of this, gun, it should be, in the common colloquial phrase, »turned down« without having been properly inspected and properly tested by those who sit in judgment upon it. After all, we have in this war a history of failures of imagination on the part of the military authorities; of failures to realise the enormus importance of making improvements in the supply of munitions in proper time. The very heart of the whole question of the defiency in the supply of munitions in the first year of the war was altogether a failure of ima- gination on the part of the military autho- rities to realise what the necessities of the war were, and to what the lack of munitions was going to amount. They were told by the highest authority over and over again, but they would not believe it. Then if you go from the general to the particular, we all know the history of the Stokes gun. We know that this gun was offered to the War Office—I forget the exact time, but I think a year and a-half before it was accepted. »Turned, down. Don’t want it. We shall lose more than we gain by making a change«—all the arguments were used which the noble Lord has addressed to us to-night. »The war is coming to an end; it will be over in about six months; it is not worth while.« And then finally it was found that the Stokes gun was an admirable thing, and that there was nothing to be said against it. It» was made in hundreds of thousands, and has been used ever since; but the authorities lost about a year and a-half before they realised what the value of the Stokes gun was and what it meant to the troops in the field. I do not say that this present case is going to be a repetition of that; but let us be sure that the military authorities The Marquess of Salisbury, weigh the issue fully and properly before they decide. Let them make no mistake about it. This Madsen gun is the best machine-gun. Do not let them1 tell us that the war is going to come to an end. pretty soon; they do not know it, and it cer- tainly does not look like it. Do not let them think that opportunities which are lost will recur. They do not recur. Other people may take the gun and we may not have ft at alk Do not let them believe that a thing can be safely turned down without trying it. It must be tried. There- fore, without attempting for a moment to ask your Lordships to force upon the Government, or upon the War Office, or upon the military authorities, a military weapon of which they do not for one reason or another approve, I earnestly hope that the closing words of the noble Lord’s speech will be pregnant with, future meaning. He said that the military autho- rities were about to reconsider carefully the whole question. That is a very hopeful sign; and I trust that the result of the reconsideration will be that this gun will be thoroughly tested, and, if it tested, I venture to prophesy that it will be adopted. The Earl of STAIR: My Lords, I want to say a few words on two of the ob- jections to which Lord Elphinstone drew attention with regard to adopting this gun. He said that it was an added diffi- culty to train men to another new weapon. At the present moment I am responsible for seeing that a certain number of men are trained in. the Lewis gun, and also for training a good many recruits. From what I have seen of the Madsen gun, I feel convinced that you could teach the men who are being trained now in the Lewis gun all that it is necessary for them to know in order to use the Madsen gun without adding even one day to the training they are giving now in the Lewis gun. . Another of Lord Elphinstone’s ob- jections was that if we turned on men to start a new factory in this country for the Madsen gun it would reduce our present production of manpower. I take it that at the very outside the number of men required for a new factory of an age fit to bear arms would be possibly 1,000. Supposing it takes six months to produce