Towards the Goal | Page 7

without local obstacles and animosities--through an electrified England.
That was in February 1916. Then, in August, came the astonishing
speech of Mr. Montagu, on the development of the Munitions supply in
one short year, as illustrated by the happenings of the Somme
battlefield. And now, as successor to Mr. Montagu and Mr. Lloyd
George, Dr. Addison sat in the Minister's chair, continuing the story.
What a story it is! Starting from the manufacture of guns, ammunition
and explosives, and after pushing that to incredible figures, the
necessities of its great task has led the Ministry to one forward step
after another. Seeing that the supply of munitions depends on the
supply of raw material, it is now regulating the whole mineral supply of
this country, and much of that of the Allies; it is about to work qualities
of iron ore that have never been worked before; it is deciding, over the
length and breadth of the country, how much aluminium should be
allowed to one firm, how much copper to another; it is producing steel
for our Allies as well as for ourselves; it has taken over with time the
whole Motor Transport of the war, and is now adding to it the Railway
Transport of munitions here and abroad, and is dictating meanwhile to
every engineering firm in the country which of its orders should come
first, and which last. It is managing a whole gigantic industry with
employes running into millions, half a million of them women, and
managing it under wholly new conditions of humanity and forethought;
it is housing and feeding and caring for innumerable thousands;
transforming from day to day, as by a kind of by-work, the industrial
mind and training of multitudes, and laying the foundations of a new,
and surely happier England, after the War. And, finally, it is adjusting,
with, on the whole, great success, the rival claims of the factories and
the trenches, sending more and more men from the workshops to the
fighting line, in proportion as the unskilled labour of the country--men
and women, but especially women--is drawn, more and more widely,
into the service of a dwindling amount of skilled labour, more and
more "diluted."

* * * * *
But the light is failing and the shore is nearing. Life-belts are taken off,
the destroyers have disappeared. We are on the quay, kindly welcomed
by an officer from G.H.Q. who passes our bags rapidly through the
Custom House, and carries us off to a neighbouring hotel for the night,
it being too late for the long drive to G.H.Q. We are in France
again!--and the great presence of the army is all about us. The quay
crowded with soldiers, the port alive with ships, the grey-blue uniforms
mingling with the khaki--after a year I see it again, and one's pulses
quicken. The vast "effort of England" which last year had already
reached so great a height, and has now, as all accounts testify, been so
incredibly developed, is here once more in visible action, before me.
Next day, the motor arrives early, and with our courteous officer who
has charge of us, in front, we are off, first, for one of the great camps I
saw last year, and then for G.H.Q. itself. On the way, as we speed over
the rolling down country beyond the town, my eyes are keen to catch
some of the new signs of the time. Here is the first--a railway line in
process of doubling--and large numbers of men, some of them German
prisoners, working at it; typical both of the immense railway
development all over the military zone, since last year, and of the
extensive use now being made of prisoners' labour, in regions well
behind the firing line. They lift their heads, as we pass, looking with
curiosity at the two ladies in the military car. Their flat round caps give
them an odd similarity. It is as if one saw scores of the same face,
differentiated here and there by a beard. A docile hard-working crew,
by all accounts, who give no trouble, and are managed largely by their
N.C.O.'s. Are there some among them who saw the massacre at Dinant,
the terrible things in Lorraine? Their placid, expressionless faces tell no
tale.
But the miles have flown, and here already are the long lines of the
camp. How pleasant to be greeted by some of the same officers! We go
into the Headquarters Office, for a talk. "Grown? I should think we
have!" says Colonel----. And, rapidly, he and one of his colleagues run
through some of the additions and expansions. The Training Camp has

been practically doubled, or, rather, another training camp has been
added to the one that existed last year, and both are equipped with