Page:Our Girls.pdf/44

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34
OUR GIRLS

soft and warm, or gather her children about her knee, would have thought of the spectacle of hundreds of thousands of the daughters of Britain on their way to the factories in which they are to work all night.

It is a dark and rather sullen evening, without moon or stars, and as we drive to one of the northern heights of London we become aware of the long journeys through lonely thoroughfares, and even open gaps of country, which multitudes of the girls may have to make before they begin on their night shift. We have also time to reflect that a stronger impulse than the desire for large earnings must be operating with many to enable them to defy so much discomfort. This is not the first time that women have made munitions of war. For every war that has yet been waged women have supplied the first and greatest of all munitions—men. There has never been a war on earth but women have borne the heaviest weight of it. There has never been a