and was not absolutely unprepared in the sense that the United States
is unprepared, even for self-defence from external attack, but except for
the fleet and her little expeditionary force, England had neither men nor
equipment equal to the fighting of a great Continental war.

The wholly unexpected news of the invasion of Belgium aroused the whole
country to realize that war on a scale never known before had come, and,
as the firing upon Fort Sumter awakened America, convinced England that
she must fight to the death for her liberties, unready as she was;--but
Mr. Balfour, the First Lord of the Admiralty, says that, since the war
began, she has added one million to the tonnage of her navy, and has
doubled its personnel, and is adding more every day.

In the matter of munitions the story that Mrs. Ward tells is wonderful,
almost beyond belief. Much had been done in the first eight months of the
war, in the building of munition shops, and the ordering of vast
quantities from abroad, before the second battle of Ypres, in April, 1915,
which led to the formation of the new Coalition Ministry, including a
wholly new department, the Ministry of Munitions, with Mr. Lloyd George at
its head.

From that time to this the work has been colossal, and almost incredible,
and without serious collision with the working classes. Vast new buildings
have been erected all over England, and a huge staff, running into
thousands, set in action. The new Minister has set out with determination
to get the thing done at whatever cost, and to remove all obstacles that
he found in his way. The Government has absolutely taken control of the
whole work of the creation of munitions and the regulation of workmen,
employed in it by whatever employers, and everything and everybody has had
to submit to his imperious will, and the greatest change of all has been
the employment of women on a vast scale to do the work that only men had
ever done before. France had set about it immediately after the battle of
the Marne, and allowed no Frenchman to remain idle who could do such work.

Mrs. Ward does not fail to do full justice to the working men of Great
Britain, and shows that besides the hundreds of thousands that they have
sent to the fighting line, a million and a half remained at work in the
shops, creating munitions with the aid of skilled experts and the
astonishing help of the women, who never before had expected to have
anything to do with guns and