control instruments, automatic searchlights. "We can hardly believe our
eyes," said another foreman, "when we see the heavy stuff brought to and
from the shops in motor lorries driven by girls. Before the war it was
all carted by horses and men. The girls do the job all right, though, and
the only thing they ever complain about is that their toes get cold."
They worked without hesitation from twelve to fourteen hours a day, or a
night, for seven days a week, and with the voluntary sacrifice of public
holidays.

That is not all, or nearly all, that the women of England did--I skip
their welfare work, recreation work, nursing--but it is enough wherewith
to answer the ignorant, or the fraud, or the fool.

What did England do in the war, anyhow?

On August 8, 1914, Lord Kitchener asked for 100,000 volunteers. He had
them within fourteen days. In the first week of September 170,000 men
enrolled, 30,000 in a single day. Eleven months later, two million had
enlisted. Ten months later, five million and forty-one thousand had
voluntarily enrolled in the Army and Navy.

In 1914 Britain had in her Royal Naval Air Service 64 aeroplanes and 800
airmen. In 1917 she had many thousand aeroplanes and 42,000 airmen. In
her Royal Flying Corps she had in 1914, 66 planes and 100 men; in 1917,
several thousand planes and men by tens of thousands. In the first nine
months of 1917 British airmen brought down 876 enemy machines and drove
down 759 out of control. From July, 1917, to June, 1918, 4102 enemy
machines were destroyed or brought down with a loss of 1213 machines.

Besides financing her own war costs she had by October, 1917, loaned