To this end it is my privilege to lay before the reader certain facts and figures, so I propose to set them forth as clearly and briefly as may be, leaving them to speak for themselves. For truly Britain has given and is giving much--her men and women, her money, her very self; the soul of Britain and her Empire is in this conflict, a soul that grows but the more steadfast and determined as the struggle waxes more deadly and grim. Faint hearts and fanatics there are, of course, who, regardless of the future, would fain make peace with the foe unbeaten, a foe lost to all shame and honourable dealing, but the heart of the Empire beats true to the old war-cry of "Freedom or Death." In proof of which, if proof be needed, let us to our figures and facts. Take first her fighting men: in three short years her little army has grown until to-day seven million of her sons are under arms, and of these (most glorious fact!) nearly five million were _volunteers_. Surely since first this world was cursed by war, never did such a host march forth voluntarily to face its blasting horrors. They are fighting on many battle-fronts, these citizen-soldiers, in France, Macedonia, Mesopotamia, Palestine, Western Egypt and German East Africa, and behind them, here in the homeland, are the women, working as their men fight, with a grim and tireless determination. To-day the land hums with munition factories and huge works whose countless wheels whirr day and night, factories that have sprung up where the grass grew so lately. The terrible, yet glorious, days of Mons and the retreat, when her little army, out-gunned and out-manned, held up the rushing might of the German advance so long as life and ammunition lasted, that black time is past, for now in France and Flanders our countless guns crash in ceaseless concert, so that here in England one may hear their ominous muttering all day long and through the hush of night; and hearkening to that continuous stammering murmur one thanks God for the women of Britain. Two years ago, in June, 1915, the Ministry of Munitions was formed under Mr. David Lloyd George; as to its achievements, here are figures which shall speak plainer than any words. In the time of Mons the army was equipped and supplied by three Government factories and a very few auxiliary firms; to-day gigantic national factories, with miles of railroads to serve them, are in full swing, beside which, thousands of private factories are controlled by the Government. As a result the output of explosives in March, 1917, was over _four times_ that of March, 1916, and _twenty-eight times_ that of March, 1915, and so enormous has been the production of shells that in the first nine weeks of the summer offensive of 1917 the stock decreased by only seven per cent. despite the appalling quantity used.