d by our
National factories.

We are sending to the Allies _millions of tons of coal and
coke every month_, large quantities of machinery, and 20 per
cent. of our whole production of machine tools
(indispensable to shell manufacture).

We are supplying Russia with millions of pairs of Army
boots.

And in the matter of ammunition, we have not only enormously increased the
quantity produced--we have greatly improved its quality. The testimony of
the French experts--themselves masters in these arts of death--as conveyed
through M. Thomas, is emphatic. The new British heavy guns are "admirably
made"--"most accurate"--"most efficient."

Meanwhile a whole series of chemical problems with regard to high
explosives have been undertaken and solved by Lord Moulton's department.
If it was ever true that science was neglected by the War Office, it is
certainly true no longer; and the soldiers at the front, who have to make
practical use of what our scientific chemists and our explosive factories
at home are producing, are entirely satisfied.

For that, as Mr. Montagu points out, is the sole and supreme test. How has
the vast activity of the new Ministry of Munitions--an activity which the
nation owes--let me repeat it--to the initiative, the compelling energy,
of Mr. Lloyd George--affected our armies in the field?

The final answer to that question is not yet. The Somme offensive is still
hammering at the German gates; I shall presently give an outline of its
course from its opening on July 1st down to the present. But meanwhile
what can be said is this.

The expenditure of ammunition which enabled us to sweep through the German
first lines, in the opening days of this July, almost with ease, was
colossal beyond all precedent. The total amount of heavy guns and
ammunition manufactured by Great Britain in the first ten months of the
war, from August, 1914, to June 1, 1915, would not have kept the British
bombardment on the Somme going _for a single day_. That gives some idea of
it.

Can we keep it up? The German papers have been consoling themselves with
the reflection that so huge an effort must have exhausted our supplies. On
the contrary, says Mr. Montagu. _The output of the factories, week by
week, now covers the expenditure in the field_. No fear now, that as at
Loos, as at Neuve Chapelle, and as on a thousand other smaller occasions,
British success in the field should be crippled a