"Some of the lucky ones. " BRITISHI SOLDIERS FROM THE FRONT ON CHRISTMAS LEAVE Photograph by Paul Thompson The arrival at Waterloo station of soldiers loaded with presents and bunches of holly and mistletoe. IN PEACE TIMES THEY MADE ARTIFICIAL FLOWERS: NOW THEY ARE FRUIT HARVESTERS And judging from their jovial expressions, the useful occupation has its own reward in high spirits and excellent health as well as in the satishalf have directly replaced men. faction of giving their best efforts to their country. There are nearly 5,000,000 women at work in England today, and of these a million and a reform. It is calculated that 1,000,000 new houses must be provided as fast as possible after the war. Very well; municipalities will build them, using their own credit, backed by the national government's. The government has set a splendid example of how to improve housing and sanitary conditions wherever it has built for war workers. Out of the United Kingdom alone, with its 46,000,000 population, have been drawn 6,000,000 men for military and naval service; 1,250,000 have come from the dominions and colonies and 1,150,000 more from India. A MILLION BRITISH LIVES GIVEN TO THE CAUSE A million British lives, it was recently stated, have been given to the 'cause; yet this sacrifice will only slightly affect the Kingdom's population, because improved living conditions of the civil population have effected so great a compensatory saving of life at home. Only recently has the birth rate been appreciably depressed, while the saving of infant and adult lives has been astonishing. With all its boasted efficiency and talent for organization, I venture to say that Germany has been outstripped in these regards by war-time Britain. Alongside the military mobilization that produced the gigantic British army and approximately doubled the navy has gone a civil reorganization that has made it possible not only to create and continuously expand the war industries, but to keep alive the world commerce by which the nation lives. In bulk the exports of Britain have indeed greatly decreased; in value they have been amazingly maintained; which means support of British credit throughout the world. And not only have the exports maintained British credit and upheld the pound sterling; they have been so directed and handled as to lay a foundation for British trade after the war, whereon will rise a structure that will be more than ever the despair of German competition. Although America has gathered in half the world's monetary gold, we have not borne the sole responsibility of directing the war's finances. In truth, we have loaned money to the world, while Britain has both loaned money to it and—far more important-financed it. British credit and world-reaching banking organization have accomplished amazing results with bills of lading and commercial acceptances that we are just beginning to realize. CARRYING HUMANITY'S BURDEN On the afternoon of the coldest day of the bitter winter of 1916-17 I landed in London, after shivering through the ride from Liverpool. A robust Jehuess hoisted our bags atop her taxi and drove us to a hotel where we got quarters. That night we were refused coal for the grate in our room; there was no coal save for invalids. But that same week a convoy of vessels laden to the last pound with coal for suffering Norway had cleared from a British port and been safely escorted by British destroyers and cruisers to its northern destination. That awful winter Britain did without coal in order that Scandinavia, France, and Italy might have it. Britain-that is, except the munition works; they must have their allotment, because the armies of Britain and her allies must be equipped. All the way through, it has been for Britain to carry burdens, supply deficiencies, provide means, perform the tasks that were neither spectacular nor heroic. The British navy, working almost in secret, has been the backbone of the Entente cause. Without it the war would have ended, as Germany planned, before the close of 1914. before the close of 1914. Germany was throttled from the beginning by a fleet. whose very location, in the far northern Orkneys, was not known to the world till months after Germany was sealed. tight. It was for Britain to send the heroic first army that died in the first hundred days-but saved the Channel coast. England must needs provide the hopeless expedition to relieve Antwerp—a maneuver that failed in its immediate purpose, but saved Belgium to the Entente. Britain bore the horror of Gallipoli without wincing. When the hour came for the tables to turn, when glory and victory were at length among the possi Western Newspaper Union A BATTALION OF W. A. A. c.'s ENJOYING A REST ON THE GYMNASIUM GROUNDS AT ALDERSHOT They are awaiting the arrival of King George and Queen Mary. His Majesty on this occasion is to decorate heroes of the British army and navy. bilities, Britain, in the interest of unity and efficiency, placed her army under a French commander-in-chief and never afterward questioned his management of the struggle. NOT A MILITARY COUNTRY Britain was not a military country. Its facilities for producing the necessaries of war were hopelessly inadequate to such a contest; they had to be created; and while handling a sea campaign that might well have been esteemed her full share, providing ships and money and supplies, she built the organization for producing munitions on a scale never attempted before. Even now, how many people know that the Vickers-Maxim establishments in establishments in England employ more people than all the Krupp works? Who realizes what it means for the British navy and transport service to have transported overseas 16,000,000 soldiers, first and last, with losses almost negligible? Take the air service. It required the creation, absolutely, of an immense industry-so big, in fact, that in its ramifications it was said a year ago to be the greatest single war industry in the country. It requires 30,000 aëroplanes a year to keep 1,000 at work constantly on the fighting lines, so great is the wastage. England has been accomplishing more than this; unostentatiously but effectively, she shouldered this along with the other burdens. And, doing all this, Britain still had industrial resources that enabled her to aid America in providing hundreds of thousands of uniforms for our soldiers. before our own sources of supply and machinery of production were fully or ganized. There is an incident which I have always thought peculiarly illustrates the sort of services Britain has been rendering all along. During 1917 tonnage became so scarce that new restrictions were put on imports and oranges were barred. They came mainly from Spain, and a huge uproar was raised in that country. At length-so the story went in London at the time-Spain delivered an ultimatum: unless her oranges were taken, she would not let her iron ore go! Italy and France must have iron ore from Spain or the war might as well be stopped. So Britain quietly lifted the embargo on oranges, and somehow scraped up the shipping to bring the oranges, and also to deliver the ore to France and Italy. WHAT BRITISH WOMEN HAVE DONE Everybody knows how British women have taken the places of the men in industry, but nobody who has not seen can understand. At Sheffield we saw a gun being turned into shape, so big that we were pledged not to publish its caliber lest the enemy learn too much, and women were operating the giant lathe. At Gretna Green were near 40,000 people in one plant making high explosives, and about seven-eighths of them were women and girls. On the Clyde we found mile after mile of shipways lining that pathetically little stream that is the headquarters of the world's shipbuilding industry, and women and men worked side by side on the scaffolds, at bolting and riveting, forging and casting, as if they had always done it. In a great foundry where casings for the big naval shells were cast, we found the floor filled with women in overalls and oil-cloth caps, doing practically all the work. At Birmingham, where the cartridges for rifles and machine-guns are made by millions, women were operating the machines, with hardly a man in sight. Outside, at the shipping warehouses, we saw the boxes with labels stenciled on them, ready for shipment. They were going to France, Italy, Saloniki, Mesopotamia, South Africa, Russia, the South Seaseverywhere that Britain and the allies were fighting. What about these women, now habited to their place in industry, to the self-respecting sensation of doing their part in the world's work, to earning good wages and being independent? Will they willingly give up their places to the men after the war? The question is asked constantly. I am going to attempt an answer, based on what I have learned of the British national ambition and the British woman's conception of her relation to it. |