Take first her fighting men: in three short years her little army has grown until to-day seven million of her sons are under arms, and of these (most glorious fact!) nearly five million were volunteers. Surely since first this world was cursed by war, never did such a host march forth voluntarily to face its blasting horrors. They are fighting on many battle-fronts, these citizen-soldiers, in France, Macedonia, Mesopotamia, Palestine, Western Egypt and German East Africa, and behind them, here in the homeland, are the women, working as their men fight, with a grim and tireless determination. To-day the land hums with munition factories and huge works whose countless wheels whirr day and night, factories that have sprung up where the grass grew so lately. The terrible, yet glorious, days of Mons and the retreat, when her little army, out-gunned and out-manned, held up the rushing might of the German advance so long as life and ammunition lasted, that black time is past, for now in France and Flanders our countless guns crash in ceaseless concert, so that here in England one may hear their ominous muttering all day long and through the hush of night; and hearkening to that continuous stammering murmur one thanks God for the women of Britain.
Two years ago, in June, 1915, the Ministry of Munitions was formed under Mr. David Lloyd George; as to its achievements, here are figures which shall speak plainer than any words.
In the time of Mons the army was equipped and supplied by three Government factories and a very few auxiliary firms; to-day gigantic national factories, with miles of railroads to serve them, are in full swing, beside which, thousands of private factories are controlled by the Government. As a result the output of explosives in March, 1917, was over four times that of March, 1916, and twenty-eight times that of March, 1915, and so enormous has been the production of shells that in the first nine weeks of the summer offensive of 1917 the stock decreased by only seven per cent. despite the appalling quantity used.
The making of machine guns to-day as compared with 1915 has increased twenty-fold, while the supply of small-arm ammunition has become so abundant that the necessity for importation has ceased altogether. In one Government factory alone the making of rifles has increased ten-fold, and the employees at Woolwich Arsenal have increased from a little less than eleven thousand to nearly seventy-four thousand, of whom twenty-five thousand are women.
Production of steel, before the war, was roughly seven million tons; it is now ten million tons and still increasing, so much so that it is expected the pre-war output will be doubled by the end of 1918; while the cost of steel plates here is now less than half the cost in the U.S.A. Since May, 1917, the output of aeroplanes has been quadrupled and is rapidly increasing; an enormous programme of construction has been laid down and plans drawn up for its complete realisation.
With this vast increase in the production of munitions the cost of each article has been substantially reduced by systematic examination of actual cost, resulting in a saving of £43,000,000 over the previous year’s prices.
Figures are a dry subject in themselves, and yet such figures as these are, I venture to think, of interest, among other reasons for the difficulty the human brain has to appreciate their full meaning. Thus: the number of articles handled weekly by the Stores Departments is several hundreds of thousands above fifty million: or again, I read that the munition workers themselves have contributed £40,187,381 towards various war loans. It is all very easy to write, but who can form any just idea of such uncountable numbers?
And now, writing of the sums of money Britain has already expended, I for one am immediately lost, out of my depth and plunged ten thousand fathoms deep, for now I come upon the following:
“The total national expenditure for the three years to August 4th, 1917, is approximately £5,150,000,000, of which £1,250,000,000 is already provided for by taxation and £1,171,000,000 has been lent to our colonies and allies, which may be regarded as an investment.” Having written which I lay down my pen to think, and, giving it up, hasten to record the next fact.
“The normal pre-war taxation amounted to approximately £200,000,000, but for the current financial year (1917-1918) a revenue of £638,000,000 has been budgeted for, but this is expected to produce between £650,000,000 and £700,000,000.” Now, remembering that the cost of necessaries has risen to an unprecedented extent, these figures of the extra taxation and the amounts raised by the various war loans speak louder and more eloquently than any words how manfully Britain has shouldered her burden and of her determination to see this great struggle through to the only possible conclusion—the end, for all time, of autocratic government.