at Woolwich various records which prove the existence of the Arsenal before Schalch was born. In normal times the Arsenal provides employment for more than eight thousand hands, but, of course, in war-time this number is increased tremendously. During the South African War, for instance, more than twenty thousand were kept on at full time, and the numbers during the Great War, when women were called in to assist and relieve the boys and men, were even greater. Of course, we cannot see everything at Woolwich Arsenal. There are certain buildings in the immense area where strangers are never permitted to go. In these various experiments are being carried out, various new inventions tested, and for this work secrecy is essential. It would never do for a rival foreign Power to get even small details of a new gun, or explosive, or other warlike device. But still there is much that can be seen (after permission to visit has been obtained from the War Office)—remarkable machines which turn out with amazing rapidity the various parts of cartridges and shells; giant rolling machines and steam-hammers that fashion the huge blocks of steel, and tremendous machines that convert them into huge guns; machines by which gun-carriages and ammunition-waggons are turned out by the dozen. Half a century ago there was a great stir at Woolwich when the Arsenal turned out for the arming of the good ship _Hercules_ a new gun known as the “Woolwich Infant.” This weapon, which required a fifty-pound charge of powder, could throw a projectile weighing over two hundredweights just about six miles, and could cause a shell to pierce armour more than a foot thick at a distance of a mile. Naturally, folk in those days thought them terrible weapons. But the “infants” were soon superseded, for a few years later Woolwich turned out what were known as “eighty-one-ton guns”—deadly weapons which could fire a shell weighing twelve hundred pounds. Folk lifted their hands in surprise at the attainments of those days; but it is difficult to imagine their amazement if they could have seen our present-day guns firing shells thirty miles, or the great “Big Bertha,” by means of which the Germans fired shots from a distance of seventy miles into Paris. The tremendous guns of to-day are built up, not cast in moulds all in one piece, as were those in the early years of the Woolwich foundry. There is an inner tube and an outer, the latter of which is shrunk on to the former. The larger tube is heated, and of course the metal expands. While it is in that condition the other is placed inside, and the whole thing is lowered by tremendous cranes into a big bath of oil. The metal contracts again as it cools, and in that way the outer tube is fixed so tightly against the inner that they become practically one single tube, but with greatly added strength. The tube is then carried to a giant lathe, where it receives the rifling on its inner surface.