great board-room, I find the Munitions Committee
gathered. Its function, of course, is to help the new Ministry in
organising the war work of the town. In the case of the larger firms, the
committee has been chiefly busy in trying to replace labour withdrawn by
the war. It has been getting skilled men back from the trenches, and
advising the Ministry as to the "badging" of munition workers. It has
itself, through its command of certain scientific workshops, been
manufacturing gauges and testing materials.

It has turned the electroplate workshops of the town on to making steel
helmets, and in general has been "working in" the smaller engineering
concerns so as to make them feed the larger ones. This process here, as
everywhere, is a very educating one. The shops employed on bicycle and
ordinary motor work have, as a rule, little idea of the extreme accuracy
required in munition work. The idea of working to the thousandth of an
inch seems to them absurd; but they have to learn to work to the
ten-thousandth, and beyond! The war will leave behind it greatly raised
standards of work in England!--that every one agrees.

And I carry away with me as a last remembrance of this great town and its
activities two recollections--one of a university man doing some highly
skilled work on a particularly fine gauge: "If you ask me what I have
been doing for the last few weeks, I can only tell you that I have been
working like a nigger and have done nothing! Patience!--that's all there
is to say." And another of a "transformed" shop of moderate size, where an
active and able man, after giving up the whole of his ordinary business,
has thrown himself into the provision, within his powers, of the most
pressing war needs, as he came across them.

In July last year, for instance, munitions work in many quarters was
actually held up for want of gauges. Mr. D. made something like 10,000, to
the great assistance of certain new Government shops. Then the Government
asked for a particular kind of gun. Mr. D. undertook 1,000, and has
already delivered 400. Tools for shell-making are _everywhere_ wanted in
the rush of the huge demand. Mr. D. has been making them diligently. This
is just one example among hundreds of how a great industry is adapting
itself to the fiery needs of war.

But the dark has come, and I must catch my train. As I speed through a
vast industrial district I find in the evening papers hideous details of
the Zeppelin raid, w