Women’s skill on complicated processes has been acquired with a rapidity which has caused astonishment to experts. Before the war an apprenticeship of five or six years was considered necessary amongst Trades Unions for gaining mastery of some of the processes which women have learnt in a few months or even weeks. In measuring their achievement, however, it must never be forgotten what a debt is owed to British organised labour, which surrendered up in the hour of national crisis many of the legal rights and privileges established only after years of effort and controversy. The women munition workers of to-day have come from all ranks of society, from every corner of the Empire, many of them entirely unaccustomed to industrial life or manual work, and many unacquainted even with life in England. An incident in one munitions works may be recalled as typical of the rest. Working side by side recently on the machines in a certain factory were a soldier’s wife from a city tenement, a vigorous daughter of the Empire from a lonely Rhodesian farm, a graduate from Girton, and a scion of one of the old aristocratic families of England. War has indeed proved a powerful solvent of social barriers, and one of the distinctive features of factory life in munition areas is the excellent leadership of the educated women who have entered the works. Typical of this class of munition workers are Lady Mary Hamilton, daughter of the Duke of Abercorn, and Miss Stella Drummond, daughter of General Drummond. These two friends, girls in years but soldiers in spirit, determined in the early stages of the war to serve their country by making munitions. Accordingly they applied for work as ordinary “hands” in a munition factory, and for some six months were employed on repetition work in a shell factory. Lady Mary Hamilton has stated that she and Miss Drummond mastered the processes on which they were engaged in a few weeks, but admitted that a victory over the prejudices of the factory employees, inclined to resent the introduction of “swells,” was a lengthier task. Soon the skill of the two friends attracted the attention of those in authority, and they were selected for training in more advanced work. They were admitted into the factory school for skilled work, and after five weeks of this training they proceeded to the Government school at Brixton, London. There they followed a nine weeks’ course in such advanced work as tool-making and tool-setting--tasks which would not have been considered possible for women workers in pre-war days.