The achievement of Britain in the war cannot be judged only from her successes in the field. In 1914 she set herself resolutely to prepare a great fighting-machine which would not only be superior to that of Germany, but which would also serve the needs of all the Powers who fought by her side. It was the perfection of this machine, built up through four patient and laborious years, which enabled her in the final war of movement to deliver the succession of blows which led to victory. Take first the numbers of enlisted men. In August 1914 the British land forces were made up of 250,000 Regulars, 200,000 trained Reserves, and 250,000 partly-trained Territorials. Lord Kitchener asked for 100,000 volunteers, and these were enrolled in less than a fortnight. In one day 30,000 enlisted. By July 1915 there were 2,000,000 men in arms. In May 1916 the King announced that over 5,000,000 men had enrolled voluntarily in the army and the navy. In August 1918, 8,500,000 men were enrolled in the armed forces of the Crown. The navy, in August 1914, had 145,000 officers and men and a tonnage of 2,500,000. Four years later the figures were 450,000 men and 8,000,000 tons. In one month in the year 1918 British warships travelled 1,000,000 sea miles in home waters alone, and in the same period auxiliary vessels travelled 6,000,000 miles, or 250 times the circuit of the globe. During the war the British navy transported 20,000,000 men, of whom only 2,700 were lost by enemy action; 2,000,000 horses and mules, 25,000,000 tons of explosives, 51,000,000 tons of oil and fuel, and 130,000,000 tons of food and other materials. All this was done while fighting a constant warfare against enemy submarines. The work of the British people at home in supplying munitions was one of the main factors in the enemy’s defeat. The Ministry of Munitions was formed in June 1915, and soon became the largest of the Government departments, controlling the iron, steel, engineering, and chemical trades, and employing 2,500,000 men and 1,000,000 women. Over 10,000 firms worked for it, and Government factories increased from three in 1914 to 200 in 1918. In 1918 the figure of the first year of war in the production of certain classes of ammunition was multiplied four hundred times, and in the production of guns forty times. During the Battle of the Somme in 1916, Britain issued every week to her armies in France an amount of ammunition equal to the entire stock available for her land service at the outbreak of war; and during the last battles of 1918 the volume of shells fired was more than double that expended in the Battle of the Somme. All the railways of Britain were taken over by the State, and from October 1916 materials for thousands of miles of track, over 1,000 locomotives, and many thousands of wagons were shipped to various theatres of war, in spite of the fact that more than 170,000 railwaymen had been released for service with the army.