Page:Our Girls.pdf/17

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AT WOOLWICH
11

octopus, with arms that reach over, across and around London and the country about it.

Has the world ever witnessed a mightier example of human force? To think of the building of the Pyramids of Egypt is to fill the mind's eye with visions of innumerable armies of labourers, like trains of human ants, conveying gigantic masses of stone across the desert from the quarries of the Mokattam Hills to the plains of Mena. But Woolwich is a yet greater and more awesome vision than that, especially now, at this very moment, though we who walk the neighbouring streets of the metropolis think so little about it.

By permission of Mr. Montague, the Minister of Munitions, and with his approval, we are at the gates of the great Arsenal. The space outside is a square of irregular shape, to which many streets are converging, like rivers running to the mouth of an estuary. The rivers are always flowing. The scene reminds us of the human tide outside the gate of an