t night. "These machines must work every hour
of the twenty-four," he said. Before a fortnight had passed every
munitions mill ground incessantly.

These machines needed adequate manning. Lloyd George thereupon created
the plan that enlisted the new army of Munitions Volunteers. Nelson-like
he issued the thrilling proclamation that England expected every machine
to do its duty. It meant the end of restricted output.

With the ban off restriction he likewise clamped the lid down on drink.
Munitions workers could only go to the public houses within certain
hours: the man who brought liquor into a Government controlled plant
faced fines and if the offence was repeated, a still more drastic
punishment.

Lloyd George began a censorship of labour which disclosed the fact that
many skilled workers were wasting time on unskilled tasks. Lloyd George
now began to dilute the skilled forces with unskilled who included
thousands of women.

Right here came the first battle. Labour rebelled. It could find a way
to get liquor but it resented dilution and cried out against capacity
output. The Shell Master again became the Conciliator. He curbed the
wild horses, agreeing to a restoration of pre-war shop conditions as
soon as peace came. All he knew was the fact that the guns hungered and
that it was up to him to feed them.

The wheels were not whirring fast enough to suit Lloyd George. "We must
build our own factories," he said. Almost over night rose the mills
whose slogan was "English shells for English guns." In speeding up the
English output the Welshman was also equipping England to meet coming
needs, laying the first stone of the structure that is fast becoming an
Empire Self-Contained.

Lloyd George realised that he could not run every munitions plant,
whereupon he organised local Boards of Control in the great ordnance
centres like Woolwich, Sheffield, Newcastle and Middleboro. Each became
a separate industrial principality but all bound up by hooks of steel to
the Little Wizard who sat enthroned at Whitehall.

England became a vast arsenal, throbbing with ceaseless activity. The
smoke that trailed from the myriad stacks was the banner of a new and
triumphant faith in the future.

What was the result? Up and down the western battle front English cannon
spoke in terms of victory. No longer was British gunner required to
husband shells: to meet crash with silence. He hurled back steel for
steel and all because England's