THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE 



291 



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 at- 

 tempted before. 



Even now, how many people know that 

 the Vickers-Maxim 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 in- 

 dustry — so big, in fact, that in its ramifi- 

 cations it was said a year ago to be the 

 greatest single war industry in the coun- 

 try. It requires 30,000 aeroplanes 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 al- 

 ways thought peculiarly illustrates the 

 sort of services Britain has been render- 

 ing all along. During 19 17 tonnage be- 

 came 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 ultima- 

 tum : 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 in- 

 dustry, 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 peo- 

 ple 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 scaf- 

 folds, 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 ma- 

 chines, with hardly a man in sight. Out- 

 side, 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 Seas — 

 everywhere that Britain and the allies 

 were fighting. 



What about these women, now habited 

 to their place in industry, to the self-re- 

 specting sensation of doing their part in 

 the world's work, to earning good wages 

 and being independent? Will they will- 

 ingly give up their places to the men after 

 the war? The question is asked con- 

 stantly. I am going to attempt an an- 

 swer, based on what I have learned of 

 the British national ambition and the 

 British woman's conception of her rela- 

 tion to it. 



