But surely the rifle itself, it may pardonably be contended, is nothing if not a mechanical contrivance? Granted always that without the pressure of the infantryman's finger on the trigger, the thrust of his arm behind the bayonet, the rifle is incapable of deciding a campaign, equally self-evident is the fact that the infantryman is helpless to win the decisive victory without the aid of the rifle. Side by side, too, with the rifle, and yet another mechanical contrivance to receive "a mention," is the machine-gun, of which the "immense influence" as an injunct indispensable to the infantryman may be gauged from the statement that "from a proportion of one gun to approximately 500 infantrymen in 1914, our establishment of machine guns and Lewis guns had risen at the end of 1918 to one machine gun or Lewis gun to approximately 20 infantrymen." It was in order to bring about this enormous increase in the number of machine guns, that millwrights were sent from Crewe in the summer of 1915 at the urgent request of Mr. Lloyd George (then Minister of Munitions) to install in some newly erected works in Birmingham the machinery necessary for their manufacture. Crewe may therefore be permitted to claim a certain degree of credit for the final issue; for, in addition to furthering the output of Lewis guns which, as we know, assisted the infantryman in so admirable a manner, she was also responsible for the various extremely delicate gauges necessary for the manufacture of rifles, which in turn enabled the infantryman to win the decisive victory. Invaluable as mechanical contrivances have been in giving "a greater driving power to war," their sinister aspect cannot in any way be veiled; for, as has been only too apparent, "the greater strength of modern field defences, and the power and precision of modern weapons, the multiplication of machine guns, trench-mortars, and artillery of all natures, the employment of gas, and the rapid development of the aeroplane as a formidable agent of destruction against both men and material, all combined to increase the price to be paid for victory." Sir Douglas Haig estimates the total number of British casualties "in all theatres of war, killed, wounded, missing and prisoners, including native troops, as being approximately three millions (3,076,388)."