of the Navy did not mention this. Mention it yourself. And tell them
about the boy scouts and the women. Fifteen thousand of the boy scouts
joined the colors, and over fifty thousand of the younger members served
in various ways at home.

Of England's women seven million were engaged in work on munitions and
other necessaries and apparatus of war. The terrible test of that second
battle of Ypres, to which I have made brief allusion above, wrought an
industrial revolution in the manufacture of shells. The energy of
production rose at a rate which may be indicated by two or three
comparisons: In 1917 as many heavy howitzer shells were turned out in a
single day as in the whole first year of the war, as many medium shells
in five days, and as many field-gun shells in eight days. Or in other
words, 45 times as many field-gun shells, 73 times as many medium, and
365 times as many heavy howitzer shells, were turned out in 1917 as in
the first year of the war. These shells were manufactured in buildings
totaling fifteen miles in length, forty feet in breadth, with more than
ten thousand machine tools driven by seventeen miles of shafting with an
energy of twenty-five thousand horse-power and a weekly output of over
ten thousand tons' weight of projectiles--all this largely worked by the
women of England. While the fleet had increased its personnel from
136,000 to about 400,000, and 2,000,000 men by July, 1915, had
voluntarily enlisted in the army before England gave up her birthright
and accepted compulsory service, the women of England left their ordinary
lives to fabricate the necessaries of war. They worked at home while
their husbands, brothers, and sons fought and died on six battle fronts
abroad--six hundred and fifty-eight thousand died, remember; do you
remember the number of Americans killed in action?--less than thirty-six
thousand;--those English women worked on, seven millions of them at
least, on milk carts, motor-busses, elevators, steam engines, and in