He took me through every stage of his process.  In his office he showed me the general story.  Here were photographs of certain vacant fields and old sheds—­“this place”—­he indicated the altered prospect from the window—­“at the outbreak of the war.”  He showed me a plan of the first undertaking.  “Now we have rather over nine thousand workpeople.”

He showed me a little row of specimens.  “These we make for Italy.  These go to Russia.  These are the Rumanian pattern.”

Thence to the first stage, the chopping up of the iron bars, the furnace, the punching out of the first shape of the shell; all this is men’s work.  I had seen this sort of thing before in peace ironworks, but I saw it again with the same astonishment, the absolute precision of movement on the part of the half-naked sweating men, the calculated efficiency of each worker, the apparent heedlessness, the real certitude, with which the blazing hot cylinder is put here, dropped there, rolls to its next appointed spot, is chopped up and handed on, the swift passage to the cooling crude, pinkish-purple shell shape.  Down a long line one sees in perspective a practical symmetry, of furnace and machine group and the shells marching on from this first series of phases to undergo the long succession of operations, machine after machine, across the great width of the shed in which eighty per cent of the workers are women.  There is a thick dust of sounds in the air, a rumble of shafting, sudden thuddings, clankings, and M. Citroen has to raise his voice.  He points out where he has made little changes in procedures, cut out some wasteful movement....  He has an idea and makes a note in the ever-ready notebook.

There is a beauty about all these women, there is extraordinary grace in their finely adjusted movements.  I have come from an after-lunch coffee upon the boulevards and from watching the ugly fashion of our time; it is a relief to be reminded that most women can after all be beautiful—­if only they would not “dress.” these women wear simple overalls and caps.  In the cap is a rosette.  Each shed has its own colour of rosette.

“There is much esprit de corps here,” says M. Citroen.

“And also,” he adds, showing obverse as well as reverse of the world’s problem of employment and discipline, “we can see at once if a woman is not in her proper shed.”

Across the great sheds under the shafting—­how fine it must look at night!—­the shells march, are shaped, cut, fitted with copper bands, calibrated, polished, varnished....

Then we go on to another system of machines in which lead is reduced to plastic ribbons and cut into shrapnel bullets as the sweetstuff makers pull out and cut up sweetstuff.  And thence into a warren of hot underground passages in which run the power cables.  There is not a cable in the place that is not immediately accessible to the electricians.  We visit the dynamos and a vast organisation of switchboards....