ard, it is impossible to get away from this happy thought—if last winter and spring and summer we could hold the enemy, could even on occasion beat back a long and desperate assault, break in and grip and stick to a mile or two of country, a few lines of trenches, if we could do what we have done with a small army and a desperate lack of munitions, what are we going to do this year with a fresh and big army, with lavish supplies of every arm and equipment we require, with a flood of munitions pouring in as fast as ever we can21 pelt them out? It looks pretty good, doesn’t it? And now I’ll go on to a general description of some of the proofs I have had of just how good it really looks.

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22

II
THE MUNITION MACHINE

I have, I admit, been amazed to see the extent to which the war workshops of the country have grown, the enlargement of existing works, the springing up of entirely new factories, the huge armies busily employed in all these places. But I have been still more astonished—I have been out Front a year, remember, and have lost touch with the country’s domestic doings—to find how munition-making has become part and parcel of the national existence; that it is quite a commonplace for Lady This of Tudor Hall or Countess That of Belgravia to be handling a lathe in a workshop23 alongside Miss So from Kensington and ’Liza Such from Houndsditch; that it is no more than a matter of course that a man cast for a commission and refused for the ranks a year ago on account of bad eyes has “gone munitioning” and, grime and oil to his weak eye-rims, is driving a donkey engine in