The war has not been prolific in England of "big men." Barring, perhaps, Joffre and Hindenburg, it has produced none anywhere. But I venture that far into the realm of prophecy to predict that the recorder of the life and times of Great Britain in the crucible which was 1915 will pay no mean tribute to the newspaper proprietor who risked prestige and power for the sake of that most prodigious of all tasks--stuffing unpalatable truth down British throats. Northcliffe’s actual methods in the performance of the deed may have been debatable. His motives were certainly beyond question, and they will, undoubtedly, appear in true perspective in the impartial light of history. He is not offended when people detect Napoleonic flashes in his impetuous eccentricities, and he would be the last man in the world to deny that his brand of genius is entirely devoid of defects, as it assuredly is not. Northcliffe has been held up to public obloquy as hardly any man of his generation ever was before him and has even been charged with being in "German pay." But he has lived to see the ripening of the fruits of his sensational crusade: the British munitions output has been quadrupled since the Stock Exchange first burnt _The Daily Mail_. Lloyd-George, at the Ministry of Munitions, has gathered round him the strongest company of business and scientific brains that was ever applied to any Government department in England. One million men and women, in more than two thousand "controlled" establishments, are turning out days, nights and Sundays the shells with which the British army, early or late, is going to cleave its way to victory. In the great fighting around Loos at the end of September, when the French and the British between them fired 65,000,000 shells in seventy-two hours, there was no shortage of the wherewithal, the lack of which turned Neuve Chapelle into a "victory" which Britain had been better without. A prodigious amount of high explosive was necessary to wreck the Germans’ first defensive lines in Artois, but still the supply was not exhausted. When the cease-fire was sounded, the British commanders found that they had on hand a great deal more ammunition than they expected, and in certain departments there was actually a greater quantity ready for the gunners at the end of the struggle than at the beginning. Mr. Lloyd-George received and was entitled to the chief glory for that splendid assurance that there would be no more Neuve Chapelles. But I am sure that the little Welshman who has accomplished the miracle of "speeding up" Britain would be the first to acknowledge that _The Daily Mail_, though its circulation is 150,000 less than it was in May, can not be robbed of the honor that belongs to it for having torn the scales from England’s eyes on the "shells tragedy."