Meantime Germany dripped with efficiency and ached with expansion. Her amazing teamwork between state and business, stimulated by an interested finance, drove her on to a place in the sun. The shadows seemed far away when the great war crashed into civilisation. Then England woke to the folly of her blindness. The mystery of coal-tar products was shut up in a German laboratory; the secrets of tungsten, necessary to the toughest steel, were imprisoned in a Teutonic mill; and so on down a long list of products vital to industry and defence. Even those early and tragic reverses of the war did not stir the stolid British bulk. Men fought for a chance to fight; restriction still oppressed factory output. Red tape vied with tradition to block the path of military and industrial preparation. Then the Lion stirred; the sloth fell away; men and munitions were enlisted; the strong hand was put on labour tyranny; conscription succeeded the haphazard voluntary system. Britain got busy and she has buzzed ever since. When the kingdom had become a huge arsenal; when the old sex differences vanished under the touchstone of a common peril; when the first khaki host swept to its place in the battle line, and the grey fleets were once more queens of the seas, England turned to the task of commercial rebuilding, once neglected, but thenceforth to be part and parcel of British purpose. Animating this purpose, stirring it like a vast emotion, was the New Battle Cry of Empire--the kindling Creed of United Dominions, consecrated to the economic mastery of the world. But this revival was not an overnight performance. If you know England you also know that it takes a colossal jolt to stir the British mind. The war had been in full swing for over a year and the countryside was an armed camp before the realisation of what might happen commercially after the war soaked into the average islander's consciousness. Under the impassioned eloquence of Lloyd George the munition workers had been marshalled into an inspired working host; with the magic of Kitchener's name, the greatest of all voluntary armies came into being. But it remained for Hughes, of Australia, to point out the fresh path for the feet of the race. Who is Hughes, of Australia? You need not ask in England, for the story of his advent, the record of his astounding triumph, the thrilling message that he left implanted in the British breast, constitute one of the miracles of a war that is one long succession of dramatic episodes. This Colonial Prime Minister arrived unknown: he left a popular hero. Thanks to him, Australia was prepared for war; and when the Mother Lioness sent out the world call to her cubs beyond the seas there was swift response from the men of bush and range. The world knows what the Anzacs did in the Dardanelles; how they registered a monster heroism on the rocky heights of Gallipoli; gave a new glory to British arms.