Report on Britain

IF you ask the average American to define 'total war' he is apt to fumble for an answer. But in Britain everyone knows the answer, because Britain has mobilized its total labour force, including women. If we were to match, proportionately to our population, Britain's mobilization of labour, we should have 60,000,000 people working full time in the armed services, civilian defence, and war industries. Actually we have fewer than 35,000,000 so employed. In Britain two out of every three persons between the ages of fourteen and sixty-five are so engaged. For the first time in the history of any democracy Britain conscripts women for service in the army, navy, and air force. Two hundred thousand British women have been conscripted for the army, known as ATS, meaning Auxiliary Territorial Service. There are more women in the air force than the total personnel of the RAF at the outbreak of the war and almost all of the land base jobs of the British navy are now handled by women. In addition to cooking and office work, Britain's women soldiers and sailors are driving trucks and motorcycles, repairing motor vehicles, packing and repacking parachutes, installing, inspecting, and maintaining gun equipment and ammunition of combat planes after each raid, raising and lowering barrage balloons, forecasting weather, manning harbour craft, sending and receiving radio messages. A normal ack-ack unit is composed of 229 women and 189 men. The women man the gun height finders and predictors, give bearings, and signal to fire.