At the outbreak of the war, M. Thomas, torn from peaceful Socialistic propaganda in _L’Humanité_, where he supported M. Jean Jaurès in his opposition to Three-Years, went to the Front as a lieutenant of reserve. After a few weeks in the trenches, he joined his General’s Staff and then was summoned to Bordeaux, whither the Government had retired from threatened Paris. "Will you organise Munitions?" he was asked. The battle of the Marne had revealed not only their primordial necessity, but the grievous shortage of France, and it was said that had she been better provided, the Germans would have had no chance of re-establishing themselves on the line of the Aisne. So M. Thomas, faced with the crude need of the hour, undertook the post and flung himself into it with his accustomed energy. His acquaintance with steel, both in the works he had studied and the railway he had controlled, fortified his resolution to undertake the responsibility. Day and night he passed rapidly, from point to point, in his motor-car, organising munition work and exhorting and advising the engineers of the country engaged in it, until, gradually, the production was screwed up to a point where, with the shells made in England, it equalled the output of the German factories. Here was a strange destiny for a man whose reading and reflection had induced him to believe that the tide of humanity was set towards universal brotherhood. Looking as little like a professor of war as could be possibly imagined—a little plethoric, a little heavy in face and figure, and glancing out upon the world through kindly spectacles—this new embodiment of Mars accepted his position with a frank and systematised zeal that led directly to success. In a short time, the tree brought forth prodigious fruit. He worked ceaselessly, turning Sundays into days of labour; his only relaxation from exhausting office was to undertake further journeys of inspection.