week without a pause. We want to see the Germans hammered out of one position, pressed hard and close and hurled out of the next, driven hard again, battered and pushed in and battered and thrust out again and again, treated, in fact, in just the sort of fashion they used against the Russians in the Eastern drive. We can only do that as the Germans did it--by the use of overwhelming torrents of artillery, rifle, and machine-gun fire, grenades and bombs. Be very sure that if and when we commence an offensive on those lines, the Germans are going to reply in like fashion, are going to go all out to beat down our heaviest fire with their still heavier one. The workers at home know the enormous amount of munitions preparing here, but the Front knows and feels the equally great effort of the German workshops. In old days we have known it too often by having to sit and suffer under it while our own reply was hopelessly inadequate; now our great hope is that at last we are going to be on something better than level terms. But to put us on such terms the war-workers have still to strain every nerve and muscle, put out every ounce they possibly can. The whole thing rests on them. They have been given the material, the shops, the machines; they have got the finest brains of the Empire guiding their efforts and ensuring that the greatest possible result is obtained from their work. So it is up to them, and to them only. I don’t think there is the slightest fear that on the whole the war-workers are going to fail us, but it is impossible to avoid seeing that enormous damage and desperate delay may occur through the slacking or indifference or discontent of any one section of the workers. In this great business of munition-making it is inevitable that all the parts should dovetail, and that the output should advance in one long even wave. It is no use having a million shells if, because the fuse-makers have failed, there are not a million fuses to fit them; it is just as useless having a million shells and fuses if the million cartridge-cases are not ready, and a million charges of cordite made, and the guns to fire them completed, and the gun-carriages built, and the telescopic or prismatic sights made, and the gunners’ maps printed, and the boots and clothes and equipments provided for the gunners. And even if every last possible arm and ammunition and equipment is completed in the artillery, the battle-line must halt, or, still worse, must be beaten back and brutally punished, if there is a shortage of machine-guns or cartridges or bombs or grenades. In a great battle every branch of the Army must move and work together and keep the pace as one great and unbroken whole, and it is equally vital that the battle of the war-workers must run in exactly the same fashion. The men making one of many fuse-parts may lose us a battle if they hang up their work and prevent the fuses being finished and so leave the