A month after the first factory was opened, the Government asked for another--for larger shell. It was begun in August, and was in work in a few weeks. In September a still larger factory--for still larger shells--(how these demands illustrate the course of the war!--how they are themselves illustrated by the history of Verdun!) was seen to be necessary. It was begun in September, and is now running. Almost all the machines used in the factory have been made in the town itself, and about 100 small firms, making shell parts--fuses primers, gaines, etc.--have been grouped round the main firm, and are every day sending in their work to the factory to be tested, put together, and delivered. No factory made a better impression upon me than this one. The large, airy building with its cheerful lighting; the girls in their dark-blue caps and overalls, their long and comely lines reminding one of some processional effect in a Florentine picture; the high proportion of good looks, even of delicate beauty, among them; the upper galleries with their tables piled with glittering brasswork, amid which move the quick, trained hands of the women--if one could have forgotten for a moment the meaning of it all, one might have applied to it Carlyle's description of a great school, as "a temple of industrious peace." Some day, perhaps, this "new industry"--as our ancestors talked of a "new learning"--this swift, astonishing development of industrial faculty among our people, especially among our women, will bear other and rich fruit for England under a cleared sky. It is impossible that it should pass by without effect, profound effect upon our national life. But at present it has one meaning and one only--_war_! Talk to these girls and women. This woman has lost her son--that one her husband. This one has a brother home on leave, and is rejoicing in the return of her husband from the trenches, as a skilled man, indispensable in the shop; another has friends in the places and among the people which suffered in the last Zeppelin raid. She speaks of it with tight lips. Was it she who chalked the inscription found by the Lady Superintendent on a lathe some nights ago--"_Done fourteen to-day. Beat that if you can, you devils_!"