As to the problem of what is to be done with the women after the war, one
may safely leave it to the future. It is probably bound up with that other
problem of the great new workshops springing up everywhere, and the huge
new plants laid down. One thinks of the rapid recovery of French trade
after the war of 1870, and of the far more rapid rate--after forty years
of machine and transport development, at which the industry of the Allied
countries may possibly recover the ravages of the present war, when once
peace is signed. In that recovery, how great a part may yet be played by
these war workshops!--transformed to the uses of peace; by their crowds of
work-people, and by the hitherto unused intelligence they are everywhere
evoking and training among both men and women.

As for the following day, my impressions, looking back, seem to be all a
variant on a well-known Greek chorus, which hymns the amazing--the
"terrible"--cleverness of Man! Seafaring, tillage, house-building,
horse-taming, so muses Sophocles, two thousand three hundred years ago;
how did man ever find them out? "Wonders are many, but the most wonderful
thing is man! _Only against death has he no resource_."

_Intelligence_--and _death_! They are written everywhere in these endless
workshops, devoted to the fiercest purposes of war. First of all, we visit
the "danger buildings" in the fuse factory, where mostly women are
employed. About 500 women are at work here, on different processes
connected with the delicate mechanism and filling of the fuse and gaine,
some of which are dangerous. Detonator work, for instance. The Lady
Superintendent selects for it specially steady and careful women or girls,
who are paid at time-and-a-quarter rate. Only about eight girls are
allowed in each room. The girls here all wear--for protection--green
muslin veils and gloves. It gives them a curious, ghastly look, that fits