shops, gauge shops--and so on for ever. In the
tool-making shops the output has risen from 44,000 to 3,000,000 a year!

And meanwhile I have not seen anything, and shall not have time to see
anything of the famous shipyards of the firm. But with regard to them, all
that it is necessary to remember is that before the war they were capable
of berthing twenty ships at once, from the largest battleship downward;
and we have Mr. Balfour's word for it as to what has happened, since the
war, in the naval shipyards of this country. "We have added _a million
tons to the Navy--and we have doubled its personnel_."

And now let me record two final sayings.

One from a manager of a department:

We have a good many Socialists here, and they constantly
give trouble. But the great majority of the men have done
wonderfully! Some men have put in one hundred hours a week
since the war began. Some have not lost a minute since it
began. The old hands have worked _splendidly_.

And another from one of the Directors:

I know of no drunkenness among our women. I don't remember
ever having seen a drunken woman round here.

III

I have almost said my say on munitions, though I could continue the story
much longer. But the wonder of it consists really in its vastness, in the
steady development of a movement which will not end or slacken till the
Allies are victorious. Except for the endless picturesqueness of the
women's share in it, and the mechanical invention and adaptation going on
everywhere, with which only a technical expert could deal, it is of course
monotonous, and I might weary you. I will only--before asking you to
cross the Channel with me to France--put down a few notes and impressions
on the Clyde district, where, as our newspapers will have told you, there
is at the present moment (March 29th) some serious labour trouble, with
which the Government is dealing. Until further light is thrown upon its
causes, comment is better postponed. But I have spoken quite frankly in
these letters of "danger spots," where a type of international Socialism
is to be found--affecting a small number of men, over whom the ideas of
"country" and "national honour" seem to have no hold. Every country
possesses such men and must guard itself against them. A nucleus of them
exists in this populous and important district. How far their influence
is helped among those who care nothing for their ideas, by any real