hands--I should say were, because that is some weeks ago now, and many changes come in a few weeks’ munition work these days--2,000 hands, and of these there were only sixty men who were engineers, were skilled men. I asked what was the proportion amongst those men I had watched grabbing and slinging about the white-hot billets, handling them and the huge power machines so smoothly and skilfully. “Those,” said the manager simply, “were all unskilled no more than a matter of months ago. Milkmen, and market gardeners, and carters, and all sorts they were, red-raw new to the job, and never inside a shop or handled a tool till they came in here.” It seemed incredible, but I found plenty of similar instances since, and the munitions engineer who was going round with me assured me these things are the rule rather than the exception. So apparently war work is not only making shell factories out of sewing-machine and tobacco works, munition contractors out of enamel-button makers, munition machines from bicycle- and clock-factory lathes, but is also manufacturing as a by-product engineers and mechanics from milkmen and all sorts of similar unlikely material. This manager had the same old story to tell of increasing plant and hands and output. I stumbled over a litter of planks and bricks and mortar and building material outside this factory, just as I have outside many others, and saw the half-built furnaces and half-laid concrete engine-beds, and listened to the tally of the work under construction and the machines on order or delivery, and the increase of output that would result. This factory is doing six- and eight-inch shells mainly, but the same increased-output programme belongs to every other make in every shell factory I saw. One place is almost ready to commence delivery of some hundreds of twelve-inch shells per week as a new addition to their present output of many thousands of eight-inch shells and forgings of six-inch shells per week, as well as completing a portion of the six-inch. I saw at this place piles of new lathes and motors waiting to be erected, and saw the new shops that have used up 4,000 additional new hands.