from the moment when it is a segment of steel bar just cut off, to the
moment when it is no more than a few dispersed and rusting rags and
fragments of steel--pressed upon the stray visitor to the battlefield as
souvenirs. All good factories are intensely interesting places to visit,
but a good munition factory is romantically satisfactory. It is as
nearly free from the antagonism of employer and employed as any factory
can be. The busy sheds I visited near Paris struck me as being the most
living and active things in the entire war machine. Everywhere else I
saw fitful activity, or men waiting. I have seen more men sitting about
and standing about, more bored inactivity, during my tour than I have
ever seen before in my life. Even the front line trenches seem to
slumber; the Angel of Death drowses over them, and moves in his sleep
to crush out men's lives. The gunfire has an indolent intermittence.
But the munition factories grind on night and day, grinding against
the factories in Central Europe, grinding out the slow and costly and
necessary victory that should end aggressive warfare in the world for
ever.

It would be very interesting if one could arrange a meeting between
any typical Allied munition maker on the one hand, and the Kaiser and
Hindenburg, those two dominant effigies of the German nationalists'
dream of "world might." Or failing that, Mr. Dyson might draw the
encounter. You imagine these two heroic figures got up for the
interview, very magnificent in shining helms and flowing cloaks,
decorations, splendid swords, spurs. "Here," one would say, "is the
power that has held you. You were bolstered up very loyally by the Krupp
firm and so forth, you piled up shell, guns, war material, you hoped to
snatch your victory before the industrialisation and invention of the
world could turn upon you. But you failed. You were not rapid enough.
The battle of the Marne was your misfortune. And Ypres. You lost some