to the workshops. That is their business, not mine, and not even, I think, the State's. They are doing inevitable work that can only be done by broad loins and brawny muscles. And when people talk about removing them to the front and filling their places, either with women, assisted by cranes, or with other men who have been adjudged too old or too weak for military service, the natural man in me can only be appeased by one reply—Don't talk damned nonsense.
The last of our visits to the munition factories of the London area is to a colossal place, whereof a portion was previously engaged in the manufacture of a musical instrument. We find vast numbers of women in the workshops here, chiefly occupied in the making of fuses. It is a delicate job in which an error of a thousandth of an inch is enough to scrap the work. The lathes are carefully set, so that errors may not occur, but the machine has never yet been made that is fool-proof. There is an inspection bench
