London, June 9.
"Britain is becoming almost overnight a great military Power," declared Mr. Leslie—Hore-Belisha, Secretary of State for War, in a speech at Plymouth today. "We shall, in the course*of the next few months," he added, "have under arms in this country upwards of 750,000 men, a total which bears comparison with that of Continental armies."
Recalling the fact that the doubling of the modernized Field Army was announced in March, Mr. Hore-Belisha said that the response had been dramatic in volume, as only two months after the announcement had been made, 152,000 officers and men had joined.
That was a record never before equalled or even approached by any voluntary system in peace time.
The task before the War Office, he concluded, was one of unprecedented magnitude, and the building programme alone for the current year would average nearly £1,000,000 each week.—Reuter.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.