Figuratively speaking, Crewe may perhaps be referred to as the "spill" on which the face of the London and North-Western compass pivots; the four points, north, south, east, and west, extending respectively to Carlisle, London, Leeds and Holyhead; but familiar as are the scenes of everyday activity throughout the entire length and breadth of the Company's system, foggy, for the most part, are the notions as to the phenomenal whirl of industrial enterprise daily in progress within the precincts of Crewe Works. Yet in these great engine Works (so menacing and unprecedented were the exigencies created by this voracious war), 'midst all the multifarious machinery and up-to-date appliances whereby is fashioned and evolved in all its amazing detail that complex piece of mechanism, the very essence of railroad itinerancy, the modern locomotive, was improvised with a speed approximating that of the mushroom which springs up in the night, a model and comprehensive plant, correlative with the multiform processes involved in the manufacture of that swift harbinger of death, the high-explosive shell, and its complement of grim appurtenances. How paralysing was the lack of these shells may be gathered from the fact that[4] "in the month of May (1915), when the Germans were turning out 250,000 shells a day, most of them high-explosive, we were turning out 2500 a day in high explosive and 13,000 in shrapnel." This gentle reminder to a lethargic House did actually (so we are told) evoke cries of "Oh," which latent degree of enthusiasm cannot be considered exactly vulgar or ultra ebullient, when side by side with so depressing a situation at home we endeavour to grasp the staggering figures as set forth in the following French official statement:--"Our artillery to the north of Arras fired in twenty-four consecutive hours 300,000 shells, that is to say, very nearly as many shells as were fired by the entire French artillery in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71. The weight of these 300,000 shells can be put at 4,500,000 kilos; or nearly 4435 tons. In other words, more than 300 large trucks were required for carrying them by rail, or roughly half a dozen complete goods trains; by road this would have meant 4000 waggons, each with a team of six horses. The monetary value of these projectiles may be put at something like £374,800." [4] Mr. Lloyd George, House of Commons, Dec. 15th, 1915.