An afternoon train takes me on to another great town, with some very ancient institutions, which have done very modern service in the war.  I spent my evening in talking with my host, a steel manufacturer identified with the life of the city, but serving also on one of the central committees of the Ministry in London.  Labour and politics, the chances of the war, America and American feeling towards us, the task of the new Minister of Munitions, the temper of English and Scotch workmen, the flux into which all manufacturing conditions have been thrown by the war, and how far old landmarks can be restored after it—­we talked hard on these and many other topics, till I must break it off—­unwillingly!—­to get some sleep and write some notes.

Next day took me deep into the very central current of “England’s Effort”—­so far as this great phase of it at any rate is concerned.  In this town, even more than in the city I had just left, one felt the throb of the nation’s rising power, concentrated, orderly, determined.  Every single engineering business in a town of engineers was working for the war.  Every manufacturer of any importance was doing his best for the Government, some in connection with the new Ministry, some with the Admiralty, some with the War Office.  As for the leading firms of the city, the record of growth, of a mounting energy by day and night, was nothing short of bewildering.  Take these few impressions of a long day, as they come back to me.

First, a great steel warehouse, full of raw steel of many sorts and kinds, bayonet steel, rifle steel, shell steel, stacked in every available corner and against every possible wall—­all sold, every bit of it, and ready to be shipped—­some to the Colonies, some to our Allies, with peremptory orders coming in as to which the harassed head of the firm could only shake his head with a despairing “impossible!”

Then some hours in a famous works, under the guidance of the managing director, one of those men, shrewd, indefatigable, humane, in whose company one learns what it is, in spite of all our supposed deficiencies, that makes the secret of England’s industrial tenacity.  An elderly Scotchman, very plainly marked by the labour and strain of the preceding eighteen months, but still steadily keeping his head and his temper, showing the signs of an Evangelical tradition in his strong dislike for Sunday work, his evident care for his work-people—­men and women—­and his just and sympathetic tone towards the labour with which he has to deal—­such is my companion.

He has a wonderful story to tell:  “In September, 1914, we were called upon to manufacture a large extra number of field-guns.  We had neither buildings nor machinery for the order.  However, we set to work.  We took down seven dwelling-houses; in three weeks we were whitewashing the walls of our new workshop and laying in the machinery.  My idea was to make so many guns.  The Government asked for four times as many.  So we took down more houses, and built another much larger shop.  The work was finished in ten weeks.  Five other large workshops were put up last year, all built with lightning speed, and everywhere additions have been made to the machinery in every department wherever it was possible to put machines.”