Within a very short time of Mr. Lloyd George assuming the reins of Government and the responsibility for the supply of the vast quantities of munitions which were found necessary for an energetic and successful prosecution of the war to final victory, Birmingham became one immense area of feverish war activity. Factories which in times of peace were employed in the production of agricultural implements for use throughout the world; the making of “Birmingham” jewellery; the provision of “trade” articles for barter with the uncivilised tribes of Central Africa, New Guinea, the South Seas, and elsewhere were speedily adapted for the more sinister purposes of the great conflict in which almost the whole of the civilised world found itself gradually becoming more or less directly involved. Birmingham was engaged in beating its ploughshares into machine–guns, and its reaping hooks into bayonets, an inversion of the Biblical dream picture of the arts of peace. Munitions were turned out in such vast quantities that the human mind cannot grasp their sum. Small arms ammunition by the thousand million rounds, shells in their millions, machine–guns in their thousands, and materials raw and otherwise of all kinds for munitions of war and clothing poured constantly from the factories of the city. A darkened city it was! But behind shuttered and curtained windows there was all the time unceasing work, the colossal output was maintained, and the titanic struggle of human brains, sinews, muscles, and sheer endurance went on. In a word, Birmingham took its place among the foremost cities of sacrifice in the Empire she played so great a part to save. The appeal to her manhood, her womanhood, her patriotism was never made in vain, whether it was for munitions made by tens of thousands of tons, or for money with which to assist national finance by way of munificent subscriptions to Loans, and the purchase of many hundreds of thousands of War Savings Certificates. And the records of Birmingham men, in the Warwickshire and other regiments which covered themselves with “an eternal weight of glory” in the field, will form a noble page in national history as long as time endures. CHAPTER IX THE STORY OF SOME ANCIENT MANOR–HOUSES—BADDESLEY CLINTON—PACKINGTON OLD HALL—MAXSTOKE CASTLE—ASTLEY CASTLE