* * * * * As to the artillery history of the war, the Field Marshal gives the most amazing figures. When in 1916, at the suggestion of Mr. Roosevelt, and by the wish of our Government, I went through some of our leading munition districts, with a view to reporting what was being done in them to England's friends in America, the great development which started from the Munitions Act of 1915 was still only in its earlier stages. Everywhere the Government factories were rising with what seemed incredible rapidity, and the older works were doubling and trebling their output. But the output was still far behind the need. By the date of the Somme Battle, indeed--in the autumn, that is, of the same year--it had risen enormously. I may quote my own words in _England's Effort_ (October, 1916): "The total amount of heavy guns and ammunition manufactured in Great Britain in the first ten months of the war would not have kept the British bombardment on the Somme _going for a single day_." And now? On that first day of the Somme Battle, July, 1916, says the Despatch, "13,000 tons of ammunition were fired by us on the Western front. On the _31st of July_, 1917, in the Third Battle of Ypres, _the British Armies used_ 23,000 _tons of ammunition_." _Last year_, from August to November, 700,000 _tons of ammunition_ were expended by the British Armies on the Western front. On the days of most active fighting 20,000 _tons a day_ was a common ration. The supply never failed. In the three months' offensive of last autumn all the Army Commanders had to think of in the matter of artillery and ammunition was transport and distribution. The amount was unlimited. While in the matter of guns, the British Army, which on August 4th, 1914, possessed 486 pieces of different calibres, all told, at the tune of the Armistice was employing 6,437 guns and howitzers of all kinds, including the heaviest monsters of the battle-field.