In my previous chapters I have told the Front what I could of the rising tide of munitions, of what they may expect from the gigantic effort that is at last being made in war work. I have said, judging from what I have seen, nothing can stand against our armies and the torrent of shells and munitions they will assuredly have from and after the spring—if the war-workers play out their part. That is the one and only “if,” but in the war works I have seen and heard some indication that the “if” still remains, and now I want to say a word, as one who went through that first winter and a year at the Front, to the workers at Home, to ask the men in the trenches to write home to any and every man or woman they may know in the war works and urge them to every possible effort as I here urge them.

There is every evidence, and evidence that is under the hands and before the eyes of the war-workers, of the enormous amount of munitions now forthcoming. What I am anxious to impress upon them is the enormous amount the Front wants and needs if it is to get a fair show. I have no wish to belittle—even if it were possible—the war-workers’ efforts, but I do want them to understand that they cannot afford to slacken that effort for a single day if an adequate, a really adequate supply is to be maintained at the Front. A new National Factory and its workers may be justly proud of their output of 5,000 shells a week, and think they are doing enormously well if by the spring they are trebling that output. But let them remember this—one single insignificant battery of Field Artillery can fire away that present week’s output in one day, a Brigade of Field Artillery can use that week’s trebled output of 15,000 shells in the day again. The workers may fairly argue that their factory is only one, that dozens, scores of other factories are each turning out as many or more shells. But so at the Front are there many guns and many batteries. Has the average worker any idea how many Field Batteries there are in the Army to-day? I may not say, but it is common knowledge that the batteries run into very large numbers, and are going to take many shells to feed, are going to keep the war-workers sweating again to keep the guns going. In the battle-lines of the Western Front—I should say battle-line, because, even if a thrust is being made on any one part of a few miles, it means that an attack must be made strongly along the whole line to prevent the enemy knowing where the main attempt is being made—there are a prodigious number of guns employed. At a distance behind the infantry trenches the ground is simply packed with guns and batteries. Hitherto we have hardly had the guns going full pelt for more than a day or two at a time. We have no wish to anticipate any such spasmodic and unsustained efforts again. On the Western Front, or the Balkan Front, or any other front, when the real Big Push comes we must look to see a battle fought fiercely and desperately week after week without a pause. We want to see the Germans hammered out of one position, pressed hard and close and hurled out of the next, driven hard again, battered and pushed in and battered and thrust out again and again, treated, in fact, in just the sort of fashion they used against the Russians in the Eastern drive. We can only do that as the Germans did it—by the use of overwhelming torrents of artillery, rifle, and machine-gun fire, grenades and bombs. Be very sure that if and when we commence an offensive on those lines, the Germans are going to reply in like fashion, are going to go all out to beat down our heaviest fire with their still heavier one. The workers at home know the enormous amount of munitions preparing here, but the Front knows and feels the equally great effort of the German workshops. In old days we have known it too often by having to sit and suffer under it while our own reply was hopelessly inadequate; now our great hope is that at last we are going to be on something better than level terms. But to put us on such terms the war-workers have still to strain every nerve and muscle, put out every ounce they possibly can. The whole thing rests on them. They have been given the material, the shops, the machines; they have got the finest brains of the Empire guiding their efforts and ensuring that the greatest possible result is obtained from their work. So it is up to them, and to them only.

I don’t think there is the slightest fear that on the whole the war-workers are going to fail us, but it is impossible to avoid seeing that enormous damage and desperate delay may occur through the slacking or indifference or discontent of any one section of the workers. In this great business of munition-making it is inevitable that all the parts should dovetail, and that the output should advance in one long even wave. It is no use having a million shells if, because the fuse-makers have failed, there are not a million fuses to fit them; it is just as useless having a million shells and fuses if the million cartridge-cases are not ready, and a million charges of cordite made, and the guns to fire them completed, and the gun-carriages built, and the telescopic or prismatic sights made, and the gunners’ maps printed, and the boots and clothes and equipments provided for the gunners. And even if every last possible arm and ammunition and equipment is completed in the artillery, the battle-line must halt, or, still worse, must be beaten back and brutally punished, if there is a shortage of machine-guns or cartridges or bombs or grenades. In a great battle every branch of the Army must move and work together and keep the pace as one great and unbroken whole, and it is equally vital that the battle of the war-workers must run in exactly the same fashion. The men making one of many fuse-parts may lose us a battle if they hang up their work and prevent the fuses being finished and so leave the guns short of shells, the Front without artillery support. The whole business of munition-making must be hung up if the coal-miners, the transport workers, the engineers, the explosive makers, almost any one section of the war-workers, fail us. Such a complete hold-up may be unthinkable, but there is another danger which is more possible and almost equally lamentable. There are still some war-workers who appear to consider the War as merely grinding out a grist of profit and good wages to them; another lot who are still more concerned over their hours and pay and conditions of labour, over labour rules and laws, written and unwritten, over the profits the employers are making or supposed to be making, over their position and status when the war is finished, than ever they are over the winning of the war. I know one works where there are two departments engaged on making six-inch and eight-inch shells. In some way, which for the moment is of no matter, the six-inch workers are paid at a lower rate than the eight-inch workers. The wages of the six-inch workers cannot be raised because that would raise the cost of the shells above the contract price; the wages of the eight-inch workers may not be lowered to level them with the six-inchers. The result is that the higher-paid men deliberately restrict their output, make fewer shells per week than they could do, so that they will only draw a weekly sum about equal to the less well-paid workers. And they do this out of a so-called sense of fairness, a supposed “loyalty to their mates.” That is the sort of pettiness or indifference that staggers anyone who has been in the carnage and destruction and misery of the Front, who has endured the punishment resulting from a shell shortage. “Sense of fairness”—“loyalty to their mates”! What about fairness to the Front, loyalty to their mates and sons and brothers in the trenches? How I wish I could make these men understand what it means to see a line of infantry hung up by barbed wire, hacking desperately at it, running up and down its face in frantic groups searching for a gap and a clear path for their bayonets, to see these stout hearts falling in hundreds under a hail of lead, the blast of machine-gun and rifle fire and bursting bombs, to watch the line dwindle and wither and melt away to heaps and clumps of dead lying still in the mud or squirming in the clutch of the wire entanglements, to scattered figures crawling and rolling and dragging their broken limbs and shattered bodies back across the shell- and bullet-swept ground in a last struggle to reach shelter. If only the most discontented workers could see such a sight, would realise that it was due to nothing but the wire entanglements not being completely swept away because sufficient shells could not be spared to make a clean job of it, I wonder if they would ever again talk of “loyalty to their mates,” would ever again waste a day off or an hour off, would ever again be satisfied to do anything less than their highest, biggest, and best possible output of work. There was talk the other day of the engineers wanting an all-round 15 per cent. rise in wages. No doubt they think themselves fairly entitled to this because the cost of living has risen. But that sort of thinking simply paralyses again the men at the Front. Suppose cost of living has risen, suppose it has risen 50 instead of 15 per cent. Does that mean that the engineers are going hungry or thirsty, doing without a bed to rest on or a roof to keep them dry? Their mates at the Front often do all this, and surely the war-workers might carry some slight share of the hardships without grumbling, and not, because butter is too dear and they must eat margarine, want an immediate rise to allow them to eat butter again.

It is instances of this sort that make one realise the ugly “if.” The real gravity of the position, the issue hanging upon them, cannot possibly be fairly understood by any war-workers who slack, or restrict output, or seriously concern themselves over such points as are constantly being raised about pay, hours, and status.

It seems so impossible that the critical nature of the war should not by now be understood, but I am sure that some of the war-workers do not even yet fully understand, and they may easily be misled into thinking munitions so plentiful and future supplies so promising that all danger of a shortage is over. Let them remember that our Army that was short of munitions was a very small affair compared with the Army of to-day. That production which left, say, 200,000 men woefully short a year ago may be multiplied exactly twenty times and still leave an Army of four millions just as exactly and woefully short as ever. And it is going to take many multiplications by twenty to raise us from the hopeless shortage that kept us standing still last year, spending flesh and blood in a desperate endeavour to make up for the lacking steel and iron, and holding our bare own, to raise us from that to being an irresistible force capable of advancing and breaking through miles of trenched and barbed-wired and fortified positions, through hordes of well-armed, unbeaten men, through a flaming barrier of shells and bombs, through liquid fire and gas and machine-gun and rifle bullets. The war-workers have to keep going more than the one front of a year ago. There is now the Western Front, the Balkans, East Africa, Mesopotamia, to say nothing of Egypt or any other battle-fronts that may develop. Our war-workers are doing wonders, are turning out mountains of munitions—but so, you may be very sure, are the enemy war-workers. They had a very long start of us, had munition factories and machines built and running, and they have been increasing these while we have been improvising and starting ours. We cannot doubt but that the German and Austrian shops are also running night and day, that the need for an enormously increased output has long since been seen and provided for, that their workers are going all out to give their armies a preponderating supply so that they may meet and beat the best our fighting and our working men can do.

The Front has no shadow of doubt about being able to beat the Germans, if our workers can beat the enemy workers. “Give us the stuff we need,” says the Front, “and we’ll give you victory.” The German armies are probably saying the same to their workshops, and the matter boils down to a battle of the workshops—ours and theirs. The British Army doesn’t want anything more than a fair show, and only the British workers can give it them. The Army is quite and cheerfully ready and willing to hunger and thirst, to perish from cold and bitter soaking wet, to wallow in the mud and misery of the trenches, to endure bodily discomfort and aching fatigue, long marches and longer outpost watchings, and lack of sleep and rest, to suffer frost-bite and disease, loss of limbs and sight, dreadful wounds and death, so that we may win the War. They can and will win, if the war-workers will back them up, will throw in the last ounce of energy and determination they possess, will fling aside the last atom of slackness or self-indulgence or bickering or selfishness. The fighting men are considering nothing—no question of short pay or long hours, or “what will happen when the war’s over,” or what individuals may profit by their sacrifice, or their own sacrifices and suffering—nothing but the winning of the War. And the War is as good as won, though the full price is yet to pay, if, and only if, the war-workers will think and act the same as the fighting men. Will they? The answer is with them, and with them only.

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