Ever since I commenced my tour of the war works I have been developing a most whole-hearted admiration for the women workers, and the Front may “spring smartly to attention” and give them the full “Present arms!” salute for the way they are buckling down to their job. This applies to women of all grades and classes too. I read in a local paper the other day a brief paragraph about a presentation made by fellow-students to a girl who has apparently dropped her college career, taken a course of instruction in munition work, and had just been given a berth in a large works in a munition city. Lady S---- (the widow of a brave man whose name is a “household word” throughout the Empire) is working in a munition factory, her title and position unknown to her workmates. If she drew wages according to her value, she would be getting many pounds where she gets shillings, because she has by constant talks with her workmates impressed upon them and explained to them that they are working for far more than a weekly wage, that they are backing up their men out Front, are saving British lives, are helping their fighting men to beat the Germans, are themselves fighting and racing the German workshops for the prize of final victory. The result of all her explaining is recorded in plain figures in that workroom’s output, in the increase of 30 per cent. the figures show. I met by chance at a restaurant lunch-table the other day a girl obviously of gentle birth and upbringing. She left the table at five minutes to the hour to be back to the factory when the whistle blew, and before she went she paid for her lunch about, I should estimate, as much as she would earn for her full day’s work. My being in uniform led her to ask a question and to tell about a brother at the Front and briefly what she has done and is doing--helping in the delivery of Derby “pink paper” forms, working in a soldier’s free buffet, making Red Cross supplies, and now, because she believed it to be the most useful and urgent, munition work. She starts work at 6 a.m. sharp every morning, she puts in some eighty hours’ work a week, and is openly proud of the fact that she has not “missed a quarter” on any day since she started. I am mentioning these instances, not for the honour and glory of any individual or any class, but merely to make it plain that many women are in munition works, not from any need or wish for pay, but solely and simply because “King and Country need them.” I have been told, when looking at a room filled with hundreds of women workers, that they represented every sort of class and occupation, and that every one of them was new to the workshops. There were ex-typists, milliners, cooks, housemaids, students, charwomen, theatre attendants, many wives and sisters of soldiers, many girls and women “of independent means.”