delicate beauty, among them; the upper galleries with their tables piled
with glittering brasswork, amid which move the quick, trained hands of
the women--if one could have forgotten for a moment the meaning of it all,
one might have applied to it Carlyle's description of a great school, as
"a temple of industrious peace."

Some day, perhaps, this "new industry"--as our ancestors talked of a "new
learning"--this swift, astonishing development of industrial faculty among
our people, especially among our women, will bear other and rich fruit for
England under a cleared sky. It is impossible that it should pass by
without effect, profound effect upon our national life. But at present it
has one meaning and one only--_war_!

Talk to these girls and women. This woman has lost her son--that one her
husband. This one has a brother home on leave, and is rejoicing in the
return of her husband from the trenches, as a skilled man, indispensable
in the shop; another has friends in the places and among the people which
suffered in the last Zeppelin raid. She speaks of it with tight lips. Was
it she who chalked the inscription found by the Lady Superintendent on a
lathe some nights ago--"_Done fourteen to-day. Beat that if you can, you
devils_!"

No!--under this fast-spreading industry, with its suggestion of good
management and high wages, there is the beat of no ordinary impulse. Some
feel it much more than others; but, says the clever and kindly
Superintendent I have already quoted: "The majority are very decidedly
working from the point of view of doing something for their country.... A
great many of the fuse women are earning for the first time.... The more I
see of them all, the better I like them." And then follow some interesting
comments on the relation of the more educated and refined women among them