Page:Our Girls.pdf/19

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AT WOOLWICH
13

among the batteries on the other side of the sea.

Before going into the women's workshops you are taken to the forges of the men, for it is impossible to come to Woolwich without seeing the awful basilicas of bridled force in which the mammoth guns are created. Here is one of them, a vast place, as big as Albert Hall. A colossal Nasmyth hammer with a blow of forty tons is pounding on a thick block of white-hot steel. First, a gentle tap to make sure of position, and then a thunderous thud that makes the earth quake beneath your feet, and gives you the sickening sense in your stomach which you may have experienced at the rumbling approach of a great eruption.

A few moments later you are in another vast forge, but here there is nearly no noise and hardly any motion. A gigantic press of four thousand tons' power is drilling a hole through another enormous block of white-hot metal. The great thing seems almost as large as the façade