'e's applied.--Oh dear, Miss,
just to _think_ of it!"

Then, with a catch in her voice:

"But it's not the comin' home, Miss--it's _the goin' back again_! Yes,
I'll come to the cookin', Miss, if I _possibly_ can!"

There's the spirit of our country folk--patriotic, patient, true.

As to labour conditions generally. I spoke, perhaps, in my first letter
rather too confidently, for the moment, of the labour situation. There
has been one serious strike among the engineers since I began to write,
and a good many minor troubles. But neither the Tyne nor the Clyde was
involved, and though valuable time was lost, in the end the men were
brought back to work quite as much by the pressure of public opinion
among their own comrades, men and women, as by any Government action.
The Government have since taken an important step from which much is
hoped, by dividing up the country into districts and appointing local
commissioners to watch over and, if they can, remove the causes of
"unrest"--causes which are often connected with the inevitable friction
of a colossal transformation, and sometimes with the sheer fatigue of
the workers, whose achievement--munition-workers, ship-wrights,
engineers--during these three years has been nothing short of
marvellous.

As to finance, the colossal figures of last year, of which I gave a
summary in _England's Effort,_ have been much surpassed. The Budget of
Great Britain for this year, including advances to our Allies, reaches
the astounding figure of two thousand three hundred million sterling.
Our war expenditure is now close upon six million sterling a day
(L5,600,000). Of this the expenditure on the Army and Navy and munitions
has risen from a daily average of nearly three millions sterling, as it
stood last year, to a daily average of nearly five millions.

But the nation has not spent in vain!

"Compare the first twenty-four days of the fighting on the Somme last
year,"--said Mr. Bonar Law in a recent speech--"with the first
twenty-four days of the operations of this spring. Four times as much
territory had been taken from the enemy in this offensive as was taken
in the Somme, against the resistance of double the number of German
divisions. And of those divisions just one-half have had to be
withdrawn--shattered--from the fighting line while the British
casualties in the offensive have been from 50 to 75 per cent, less than
the casualties in the Somme fighting."

Consider, too, th