Discovering their lack the British set about remedying it in true British fashion. It is quite characteristic of this strange people to let the enemy get ahead at the commencement, after which they pull themselves together and put on a spurt, so to speak, and after that the enemy had better prepare for the worst, for defeat is only a question of time. So, finding themselves short of shells, they set to and dotted the whole country in an incredibly short time with huge factories entirely devoted to making shells. Older factories also were adapted to the same purpose. Places intended and normally used for the manufacture of the most peaceable things--ploughs, gramophones and piano parts for example--were soon turning out shells or parts thereof by the thousand. Electric-light works, waterworks, cotton mills, technical schools, all sorts of places where, for doing their own repairs or for some similar reason, there happened to be a lathe or two, all these were organized and in a few weeks they too were working night and day "something to do with shells." Meanwhile other factories were springing up for the purpose of making explosives while others again were erected for producing the acids and other chemicals necessary for the explosive works; and yet another kind of works, the filling factories, came into being as if by magic and thousands of girls flocked from far and near to these places, there to fill the shells with the explosives. Even the soldiers did not realize a few years ago how important the supply of shells was going to be. The rifle has fallen from its old place of importance while the gun and the shell have risen to the first place. What, then, is a shell? It is what its name implies, a case covering something else, just as the shell of a fish covers its owner. It is a hollow cylinder of steel with certain things inside it. Its chief function is to hold these other things and to be shot out of a gun carrying them with it to their destination. You want to cause an explosion in an enemy's ship. You cannot get near enough to put the explosives there by hand, for he will not let you, so you put them into a steel shell and then hurl the whole thing at him out of a gun. [Illustration: BOMB THROWING. One of the most striking things about the war was the re-invention of the bomb thrown by hand. This officer hurled bombs at the enemy for twenty-four hours continuously.] In the attempt to prevent your doing him any harm by thus throwing boxes of explosives at him, the enemy clothes the sides of his most valuable and important ships with thick steel plates, wherefore you have to make your shell strong and tough so that it shall not splinter against the armour but shall on the contrary bore its way through, finally exploding in the interior of the ship.