output of a million shell per annum.

I drive on, overshadowed by these figures. _"Per annum!"_ The little
common words haunt the ear intolerably. Surely before one more year is
over, this horror under which we live will be lifted from Europe! Britain,
a victorious Britain, will be at peace, and women's hands will have
something else to do than making high-explosive shell. But, meanwhile,
there is no other way. The country's call has gone out, clear and stern,
and her daughters are coming in their thousands to meet it, from loom and
house and shop.

A little later, in a great board-room, I find the Munitions Committee
gathered. Its function, of course, is to help the new Ministry in
organising the war work of the town. In the case of the larger firms, the
committee has been chiefly busy in trying to replace labour withdrawn by
the war. It has been getting skilled men back from the trenches, and
advising the Ministry as to the "badging" of munition workers. It has
itself, through its command of certain scientific workshops, been
manufacturing gauges and testing materials.

It has turned the electroplate workshops of the town on to making steel
helmets, and in general has been "working in" the smaller engineering
concerns so as to make them feed the larger ones. This process here, as
everywhere, is a very educating one. The shops employed on bicycle and
ordinary motor work have, as a rule, little idea of the extreme accuracy
required in munition work. The idea of working to the thousandth of an
inch seems to them absurd; but they have to learn to work to the
ten-thousandth, and beyond! The war will leave behind it greatly raised
standards of work in England!--that every one agrees.