iant. Look down this
shining tube and watch the gauging, now with callipers, now with a rubber
device which takes the impression of the rifling and reveals any defect.
The gauging turns upon the ten-thousandth part of an inch, and any mistake
or flaw may mean the lives of men....

We turn out into a pale sunshine. The morning work is over, and the men
are trooping into the canteens for dinner--and we look in a moment to see
for ourselves how good a meal it is. At luncheon, afterwards, in the
Directors' Offices, I am able to talk with the leading citizens of the
great town.

One of them writes some careful notes for me. Their report of labour
conditions is excellent. "No organised strikes and few cessations of work
to report. Overtime is being freely worked. Little or no drunkenness, and
that at a time when the average earnings of many classes of workmen are
two or three times above the normal level. The methods introduced in the
twenty years before the war--conference and discussion--have practically
settled all difficulties between employers and employed, in these parts at
any rate, during this time of England's trial."

After luncheon we diverge to pay another all too brief visit to a
well-known firm. The managing director gives me some wonderful figures of
a new shell factory they are just putting up. It was begun in September,
1915. Since then 2,000 tons of steelwork has been erected, and 200 out of
1,200 machines required have been received and fixed. Four thousand to
5,000 hands will be ultimately employed.

All the actual production off the machines _will be done by women_--and
this, although the works are intended for a heavy class of shell,
60-pounder high explosive. Women are already showing their
capacity--helped by mechanical devices--to deal with this large type of
shell; and the workshop when in full working order is intended for an
output of a million shell per annum.

I drive on, overshadowed by these figures. _"Per annum!"_ The little
common words haunt the ear intolerably. Surely before one more year is
over, this horror under which we live will be lifted from Europe! Britain,
a victorious Britain, will be at peace, and women's hands will have
something else to do than making high-explosive shell. But, meanwhile,
there is no other way. The country's call has gone out, clear and stern,
and her daughters are coming in their thousands to meet it, from loom and
house and shop.

A little later, in a