see.  Food prices are very high; life in spite of increased wages is hard.  But the heart of England is set on winning this war; and the letters which pass between the fathers and mothers in this village where I live, and the sons at the front, in whom they take a daily and hourly pride, would not give Germany much comfort could she read them.  I take this little scene, as an illustration, fresh from the life of my own village: 

Imagine a visitor, on behalf of the food-economy movement, endeavouring to persuade a village mother to come to some cookery lessons organised by the local committee.

Mrs. S. is discovered sitting at a table on which are preparations for a meal.  She receives the visitor and the visitor’s remarks with an air—­quite unconscious—­of tragic meditation; and her honest labour-stained hand sweeps over the things on the table.

“Cheese!”—­she says, at last—­“eightpence the ’arf pound!”

A pause.  The hand points in another direction.

“Lard—­sevenpence—­that scrubby little piece! Sugar! sixpence ’a’penny the pound.  The best part of two shillin’s gone!  Whatever are we comin’ to?”

Gloom descends on the little kitchen.  The visitor is at a loss—­when suddenly the round, motherly face changes.—­“But there now!  I’m goin’ to smile, whatever ‘appens.  I’m not one as is goin’ to give in!  And we ’ad a letter from Arthur [her son in the trenches] this morning, to say ’is Company’s on the list for leave, and ’e’s applied.—­Oh dear, Miss, just to think of it!”

Then, with a catch in her voice: 

“But it’s not the comin’ home, Miss—­it’s the goin’ back again!  Yes, I’ll come to the cookin’, Miss, if I possibly can!”

There’s the spirit of our country folk—­patriotic, patient, true.

As to labour conditions generally.  I spoke, perhaps, in my first letter rather too confidently, for the moment, of the labour situation.  There has been one serious strike among the engineers since I began to write, and a good many minor troubles.  But neither the Tyne nor the Clyde was involved, and though valuable time was lost, in the end the men were brought back to work quite as much by the pressure of public opinion among their own comrades, men and women, as by any Government action.  The Government have since taken an important step from which much is hoped, by dividing up the country into districts and appointing local commissioners to watch over and, if they can, remove the causes of “unrest”—­causes which are often connected with the inevitable friction of a colossal transformation, and sometimes with the sheer fatigue of the workers, whose achievement—­munition-workers, ship-wrights, engineers—­during these three years has been nothing short of marvellous.

As to finance, the colossal figures of last year, of which I gave a summary in England’s Effort, have been much surpassed.  The Budget of Great Britain for this year, including advances to our Allies, reaches the astounding figure of two thousand three hundred million sterling.  Our war expenditure is now close upon six million sterling a day (L5,600,000).  Of this the expenditure on the Army and Navy and munitions has risen from a daily average of nearly three millions sterling, as it stood last year, to a daily average of nearly five millions.