The Stratford Evening Post WITH WHICH IS INCORPORATED THE EGMONT SETTLER WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 9, 1910. WHAT BRITAIN HAS DONE.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXI, Issue 9, 9 August 1916, Page 4

The Stratford Evening Post WITH WHICH IS INCORPORATED THE EGMONT SETTLER WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 9, 1910. WHAT BRITAIN HAS DONE.

Some wonderful accounts of "hat Bn'tain has'done and is doing in the " ot war industry and the making ot munitions have been given hy great writers and journalists, both British and foreign, hut possibly no one of them has presented a more vividly thrilling picture of the gigantic task the war has imposed on industrial England than Mrs. Humphrey Ward. After some months of close inspection amongst the war workers, she has published a remarkable book called “England’s Effort,” and in it sin tells ns what she has seen. Ibis famous woman novelist and writer saw an industrial revolution in England which took place in a few weeks.

She saw new workshops standing on w hat were green fields before. Ail through England she saw winning workers—men and women—working with might and main. She saw the Fleet and its splendid men, and she went and saw the war on its Western front; an unusual privilege for a woman. In her own woids. -Mi Lloyd George has covered England with new munition factories, and added enormously to the producing po" ei of the old and famous linns; has drawn in an army of women, now reckoned at something near a fpmi tel of a million; and is at this moment not only providing amply for our own Armies, but is helping those ol the Allies, against those final days of settlement with Germany which we believe to be now steadily approaching. What the workmen of England did in tin' war in her docks and shipyards history "ill tell some day. ‘What s wrong, with the men E cried a Glas-gow-employer indignantly to mo one winter evening, as quite unknown the one to the other,'we were nearing one of the towns on the Clyde. ‘W bat was done 'on the Clyde iu the first months of the war should never be forgotten by this .country. Working from six to nine every day, till they dropped with fatigue—and Sundays, too —drinking just to keep themselves going—too lin'd to eat or sleep that’s what it was—l saw it!’ We turned down a newly-made road leading towards a mass of spreading buildings oil the letl. ‘A year-ago, says my companion, ‘this was all green fields. Xow the company is employing, instead of Ad'.H) workpeople, about three times the number, of whom a large proportion are women. Us output has been quadrupled, and the experiment of introducing women Ims been a. complete success. Ibe .superintendent has not had a day’s holiday for ten months, never sleeping more that five and a-hall hours, with the telephone al hi, bed head, and waking to instant work, when the moment for wak.ng comes. If is view of bis workmen is critical. . . ■ ‘As to tin' women!’—he throw-, up his bands—‘they’re saving the country. They don’t mind what they do. Hours V They work ten and a-h-di, or, with overtime, twelve hours a day. sm-eu days a week. At least, that’s, what they’d lik-' to do. Tee G vernment are insisting on one Sunday—-or two Sundays—a month off. 1 don’t say

they’re not right. But the women resent it. ••We’re not timV’ they say. And yon look at them! linn u* not tired. ' if I go down to the sliocli ami say, “Girls, there’s a bit ot work the Government are pushing tor they say they must have—can you get it done?” why, they’ll slay and get ( it done, and then pour out works laughing and singing.’ Theyj are great stories, hut it is not only of the men and women war-workers at Home that Airs Humphrey Ward tells. _.e shows how splendidly the whole nation has rallied to the greatnational effort and that the Briton aroused and setting himself to me-, ehauieal tasks is not so slow after all. ( Airs Ward goes to the fleet and dines with its commanding officers. Speaking of their wonderful silent force, she says; “You see it,” she writes, “in so many of their faces, even in eves hollow for want of sleep. It isj always there —the same .strength, thet S anu> self-control, the same humanity. |s it produced by the testing weight of responsibility, the silent sense oil ever-present danger, both irem the forces of nature and the enmity of man, the high, scientific training, and lose, but not least, that marvellous comradeship of the Navy. whether between officer and officer, or between officers and men.” A young, broadshouldered officer said to Mrs W ard of the German Navy: “They are always fouling the :o,ls, and we are 1 always cleaning them up. Let the neutrals understand that! It is not we who strew the open waters with mines for the slaughter of any passing ship, and then call it ‘maintaining the. freedom of the seas.’ ” Iruh England has fully awakened, and the very venom of German hatred towards our Motherland, clearly shows how wonderfully she has stood in aiding the noble Allies against the wolfish ferocity of the wild beasts of Em ope.