hitherto been done by men. One woman is turning base plates for shells on a turret lathe. Another is cutting copper bands for shells from tubes. Another is pressing the copper bands into their places. Yet another is riveting brass plugs on to high explosive shell bodies. Some are drilling the holes through the six-inch shells. Others are rough turning the shell surfaces. And yet others are gauging and parting off the bodies of the huge, eight-inch high explosives. Many are making shell fuses, a task in which women have become amazingly proficient, and many more are at work at the inspection board, where, being trained to the use of one gauge only, they have developed an efficiency to which men have never attained. All this sounds portentous in description, but at close quarters it looks astonishingly simple. The machines themselves seem almost human in their automatic intelligence, and, if you show a proper respect for their impetuous organisms, they are not generally cruel. So the
