There was a strike in one of the aircraft factories; in fact, there were simultaneous strikes in many, if not most, of the factories, although for the moment this story is concerned only with one of them--or rather with its sequel. At the front they knew little or nothing of the strike, although, unfortunately, they knew a good deal of the result. On the other hand, the workers probably know nothing of what their strikes may mean to the front, and this is what I want to tell them. They have, it is true, been publicly told by a member of the Government that the strikes resulted in a waste of so many hours' work, a shortage or reduction of output of some hundreds of machines, and so on; but these things are a matter of cold figures. If they are told the result in flesh and blood, they may look at a strike in rather a different light. One Squadron in France first "felt the breeze" of the strike in a drying up of the stream of "spares" and parts that are constantly required for repair, and the mechanics having to make good this shortage by many night hours' sheer hard labour, by working long shifts when they ought to have been sleeping, by hacking out with cold chisel and hammer, and turning upon overworked lorry-shop lathes, and generally making by hand what the idle machines in the factories should have been punching out in dozens on a stamping machine, or turning comfortably on automatic lathes. That was a minor item of the strike's sequel. Another and more serious item in the same Squadron was that one or two machines, which had been marked off for return to the depots and complete overhaul and setting up, had to be kept in commission and hard at work. This was unpleasantly risky, because at this time the Squadron was very actively engaged in the preparation for a coming Push, and the machines were putting in even more than a fair average of flying hours. The life of a machine is strictly limited and countable in these "flying hours," and after a certain life machine and engine, with constant wear, and despite regular and careful looking after by the Squadron mechanics, come to be so strained and shaky that for safe flying they must have such a thorough overhaul and tuning up that it almost amounts to a rebuilding.