There are many reasons why. "For England," as one man has put it, "victory must mean prosperity. However triumphant she may be in arms, her future lies in a preeminence in world industries. Through it she will rise as an empire or sink to a second-rate nation." In the second place, as all hope of indemnity fades, England realises that she will not only have to pay all her own bills but likewise some of the bills of her allies. Already her millions have been poured into the allied defence; many more must follow. Hence, the relentless energy of her throbbing mills; the searching appraisal of her resources; the marshalling of all her genius of trade conquest. Dominating all this is the kindling idea of a self-contained empire, linked with the slogan: "Home Patronage of Home Product." The war found her unprepared to fight; she is determined that peace shall see her fit for economic battle. This is what she is doing and every act has a meaning all its own for us. Take Industry: Forty-eight hundred government-controlled factories, working day and night, are sending out a ceaseless flood of war supplies. The old bars of restricted output are down; the old sex discrimination has faded away. Women are doing men's work, getting men's pay, making themselves useful and necessary cogs in the productive machine. They will neither quit nor lose their cunning when peace comes. I have watched the inspiring spectacle of some of these factories, have walked through their forest of American-made automatics, heard the hum of American tools as they pounded and drilled and ground the instruments of death. What does it signify? This: that quantity output of shot and shell for war means quantity output of motors and many other products for peace. You may say that quantity output is a matter of temperament and that the British nature cannot be adapted to it; but speeded-up munitions making has proved the contrary. The British workman has learned to his profit that it pays to step lively. High war wages have accustomed him to luxuries he never enjoyed before, and he will not give them up. Unrestricted output has come to stay. Five years ago the efficiency expert was regarded in England as an intruder and a quack; to use a stop watch on production was high crime and treason. To-day there are thousands of students of business science and factory management. In the spinning district girls in clogs sit alongside their foremen listening to lectures on how to save time and energy in work. Scores of old establishments are being reborn productively. There is the case of a famous chocolate works that before the war rebuffed an instructor in factory reorganisation. Last year it saw the light, hired an American expert, and to-day the output has been increased by twenty-five per cent.