Close by are the forging-shops whence come the howitzers and the huge naval shells.  Watch the giant pincers that lift the red-hot ingots and drop them into the stamping presses.  Man directs; but one might think the tools themselves intelligent, like those golden automata of old that Hephaestus made, to run and wait upon the gods of Olympus.  Down drops the punch.  There is a burst of flame, as though the molten steel rebelled, and out comes the shell or the howitzer in the rough, nosed and hollowed, and ready for the turning.

The men here are great, powerful fellows, blanched with heat and labour; amid the flame and smoke of the forges one sees them as typical figures in the national struggle, linked to those Dreadnoughts in the North Sea, and to those lines in Flanders and Picardy where Britain holds her enemy at bay.  Everywhere the same intensity of effort, whether in the men or in those directing them.  And what delicate and responsible processes!

In the next shop, with its rows of shining guns, I stop to look at a great gun apparently turning itself.  No workman is visible for the moment.  The process goes on automatically, the bright steel emerging under the tool that here, too, seems alive.  Close to it is a man winding steel wire, or rather braid, on a 15-inch gun; beyond again there are workmen and inspectors testing and gauging another similar giant.  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.