To the eternal credit of the French, they realised with great rapidity the character of the war, and set themselves with methodical speed to adapt themselves to its unexpected features. Factories sprang up all over the country, some created out of boards and bricks; others existing, but "controlled" in the English sense, with Army officers assisting the civilian directors; and a vast business of production was ordered and marshalled as if the French had never done anything else in their lives. At one bound, they developed into a manufacturing nation, though the term would have been refused them, in the long yesterday of the war, by England, the United States, and Germany. Their faculty for seeing clearly and acting quickly, so apparent in their history, again came to their aid. It was their distinguishing mark during the Great Revolution. Having seized the essentials of the problem, they acted upon their insight with startling rapidity and resolution. Of course they committed excesses of a dreadful kind, but their excuse was the gigantic character of the evil which they sought to remedy. Much the same spirit of swift determination, happily without its fearful manifestations, came upon the French people, and with all the old Republican ardour they set themselves, with a sort of grim alacrity, to face the crisis. The old stern common sense, which has always lain at the bottom of apparent volatility, again came to their rescue; and in no way did the French show a greater grasp of the situation than in their handling of munitions. It had been supposed that they were wanting in order and method, and that their dramatic achievements were due to the impulse of the moment. But, even if this were ever wholly true, it was certainly not true of the second great struggle with Germany. The magnificent effort of France was the outcome, not of improvisation, but of the will to conquer and to adopt the proper means to secure that end. Nor was a Press campaign necessary, as in England, to bring home to the people the peculiar importance of war-work in the factories. It is true that M. Albert Thomas, who took charge of Munitions in the circumstances which I shall describe, made speeches to factory workers in his visits of inspection, but it was never necessary to wrestle with labour and cause it to abrogate its proud pretensions, months after the war had broken out. Conscription would have settled that question even if a vivid sense of realities had not rendered unnecessary any exhortation from Ministerial lips. The vital character of the war had penetrated to every intelligence; it had not stopped half-way through the social strata, as appeared to be the case in England. And the disposition of the working man in England towards conscription was only intelligible on the assumption that he did not understand. In France, the war was too deadly real, too close at hand for any to affect an attitude of light-hearted detachment.