The third and gravest fact is our appalling and costly slowness in mobilising our resources when the war began. Six months after the outbreak of war I went over a very large engineering shop in the north. Out of hundreds of men only a score or two were engaged on war-material: and one of the two objects on which this mere handful of men were engaged has proved to be wholly valueless. At that time, and for months afterwards, the workers of Britain were encouraged in their easy ways, and the bulk of the manufacturers were encouraged to go on with their usual business, by official assurances that no greater effort was needed. When our disgusted soldiers sent us a message that, not "the weather," but a scandalous shortage of ammunition and machine-guns kept them back, the Prime Minister, quoting the "highest available authority," publicly declared this to be untrue. We were asked rather to admire the way in which we had dispatched the greatest expeditionary force known in history: as if the enormous progress of modern times did not make this superiority a matter of course. When criticism increased, we cried for the gag and the public prosecutor, and we garlanded the portraits of the very men who had disgraced us; and we agreed to the retention or promotion of incompetent men, on obvious party-grounds. Happily one minister had the grit and patriotism to call to his aid a group of business-men, and the facts could no longer be concealed. Mr. Lloyd George admitted that since the beginning of the war, we had increased a thousandfold our production of munitions, yet were still far behind the Germans and far short of our needs; and at last, eleven months after the outbreak of war, we began to organise, or at least to ascertain, our resources. Again we loudly congratulated ourselves on our energy. We cried shame on all critics and pessimists and people who wanted more. We fancied ourselves in the character of Atlas, taking the whole burden on our massive shoulders, to spare our weaker Allies. But the sinister light which this late increase of output threw on the first six months, or more, of indolent incompetence was quite disregarded. We genially overlooked the fact that the delay of our advance was costing us nearly a hundred millions a month. We allowed less prominent affairs to be conducted with the same indolent insufficiency. The most absurdly inadequate measures were taken to control the prices of food and coal, and scarcely a thought was given to the tremendous economic problem which will confront us when the war is over, or to the means of recouping ourselves by a systematic promotion of our oversea-trade.