WOMEN IN MUNITIONS

  “For all we have and are,
    For all our children’s fate—­
  Rise up and meet the war,
    The Hun is at the gate.

* * * * *

  “Comfort, content, delight,
    The ages’ slow-bought gain,
  Have shrivelled in a night,
    Only ourselves remain.

* * * * *

  “Though all we knew depart,
    The old commandments stand,
  In courage keep your heart,
    In strength lift up your hand.”

—­RudyardKipling.

CHAPTER VI

WOMEN IN MUNITIONS

    “Hats off to the Women of Britain!”—­Sir Arthur conan Doyle in
    The Times, November 28, 1916.

When war broke out the Government had three National workshops producing munitions—­today it has 100, and it controls over 5,000 establishments through the Ministry of Munitions, many of which are continually growing in size.

The total output has increased over thirty-fold but in many cases increase in production has been far greater.  In guns, the production of 4.5 field howitzers is over fifty times as large; of machine guns and howitzers over seventy times and of heavy howitzers (over 6 inch) over 420 times as large.

More small shell is now made in a fortnight than formerly in a year, and the increase in output of heavy shell has been still larger.  Equally striking results have been attained in the production of machine guns, aeroplanes motor bodies, and the other war supplies, for which demand and replacement have necessarily grown with the demand for guns and shells.  To these have to be added the ships and the anti-submarine and anti-aircraft machines and devices that have been demanded by the enemy’s method of warfare.

This work has only been possible in a country that has raised five million men, 75 per cent from our own islands, because of what women have done.

Today there are between 800,000 and 1,000,000 women in munitions works in our country, and the history of their entry and work is a wonderful one.  Women themselves were quicker than the Government to realize how much they would be needed in munitions, and started to train before openings were ready.

Women realized vividly what Lloyd George’s speech of June, 1915, made clear, the urgent, terrible need of our men for more munitions—­the Germans could send over ten shells to our one—­and women volunteered in thousands for munition work.