CHEQUES CASHED.
We dared not investigate further. A G.H.Q. car is so clearly recognisable as such that it could not stop outside, and the subterfuge of drawing up at the Directorate of Inkstands and making a reconnaissance on foot we felt to be infra dig. It was only possible to pass the shop slowly on the return journey, and to look out for it the next month when going that way again. It was still open, still bore its artless device. It was a little bit of the old life of Paris Plage that had escaped the shocks of war.
In very truth we were a dull lot from one point of view. Even the conversation at meals was ordinarily wanting in that type of anecdote which—as Walpole said when he was asked why it was rife at his table, where sat the greatest men of Europe, who should have had something better to talk about—is popular "because every man understands it." Perhaps the propriety of our conversation was partly due to the fact that there was nearly always a padre within earshot. Perhaps I may dare the explanation of the general absence of "sex interest" in our lives, that here were gathered together a band of men with very exacting and very important work to do, and that they simply had not time nor inclination to bother about what is usually an amusement of idle lives.
CHAPTER V.
THE MUNITIONS OF THE WAR.
The Shell shortage—When relief came—The dramatic Tanks—Bombs—Some ammunition figures—The ingenious inventor.
As soon as any subject is involved in political discussion the facts about it are apt to be distorted in the interests of some particular view. The "Shell shortage" in the early stages of the war has become in a sense a political issue; and that I do not intend to discuss. But some facts about munitions supply must be given—for that was the very pivot of the war—irrespective of what political case they help or harm.
The British Force at the outset of the war suffered from a shell and gun shortage as compared with its enemy, because it had been trained and equipped for a different type of warfare from that which actually came. It had very little high explosive shell, and what it had was rarely "high explosive" in the real sense of the term. The patient search for a foolproof fuse had been so successful that our H.E. shell was comparatively inoffensive when it reached the enemy's lines. It spluttered off rather than shattered off. All this was put right in time. But the difficulties which the Munitions Supply Department had to face at the outset were enormous. There were, considered in the lights of the needs of this war, practically no shells, no guns, and no machinery for making them. Essential material was lacking in many cases, and the only source of quick supply was Germany, which alone in the world had organised for war.
But all difficulties were overcome. How great the growth some comparative figures will show. The production of high explosive in 1914 was almost negligible. The year's supply would not keep the guns of 1918 going for a day. In 1915 we began to produce high explosive on a large scale, and in amounts which made the 1914 output seem contemptible, but still in quite inadequate quantities. In 1916 we had increased the 1915 amount sevenfold. In 1917 we had increased that 1916 amount fourfold. From March, 1915, to March, 1917, the increase was twenty-eight fold. Of machine-guns we made samples in 1914 and we began to manufacture quantities in 1915. In 1917 we made twenty times as many as in 1915. Of aeroplanes the figures mounted in steep flights. In 1916 we seemed to be producing vastly. In 1917 the rate of production for the first six months had increased fourfold as compared with the previous year, and another great acceleration was in progress.