As to their thousands of workmen, Mr. C. has no complaints to make.

“They have been steadily working anything from 60 to 80 hours per week; the average is 64.29 hours per week, and the average time lost only 3.51 per cent.  A little while ago, a certain union put forward a claim for an advance in wages.  We had to decline it, but as the meeting came to an end, the trade-union secretary said: 

“’Of course, we are disappointed, and we shall no doubt return to the matter again.  But whether you concede the advance of wages or not, our members will continue to do their level best, believing that they are not only working for themselves, but helping the Government and helping our soldiers to wage this war to a successful conclusion.’”

And the manager adds his belief that this is the spirit which prevails “among the work-people generally.”

Before we plunge into the main works, however, my guide takes me to see a recent venture, organised since the war, in which he clearly takes a special interest.  An old warehouse bought, so to speak, overnight, and equipped next morning, has been turned into a small workshop for shell production—­employing between three and four hundred girls, with the number of skilled men necessary to keep the new unskilled labour going.  These girls are working on the eight hours’ shift system; and working so well that a not uncommon wage among them—­on piece-work, of course—­runs to somewhere between two and three pounds a week.

“But there is much more than money in it,” says the kind-faced woman superintendent, as we step into her little office out of the noise, to talk a little.  “The girls are perfectly aware that they are ’doing their bit,’ that they are standing by their men in the trenches.”

This testimony indeed is universal.  There is patriotism in this grim work, and affection, and a new and honourable self-consciousness.  Girls and women look up and smile as a visitor passes.  They presume that he or she is there for some useful purpose connected with the war, and their expression seems to say:  “Yes, we are all in it!—­we know very well what we are doing, and what a difference we are making.  Go and tell our boys ...”

The interest of this workshop lay, of course, in the fact that it was a sample of innumerable others, as quickly organised and as efficiently worked, now spreading over the Midlands and the north.  As to the main works belonging to the same great firm, such things have been often described; but one sees them to-day with new eyes, as part of a struggle which is one with the very life of England.  Acres and acres of ground covered by huge workshops new and old, by interlacing railway lines and moving trolleys.  Gone is all the vast miscellaneous engineering work of peace.  The war has swallowed everything.

I have a vision of a great building, where huge naval guns are being lowered from the annealing furnace above into the hardening oil-tank below, or where in the depths of a great pit, with lights and men moving at the bottom, I see as I stoop over the edge, a jacket being shrunk upon another similar monster, hanging perpendicularly below me.