Page:Our Girls.pdf/125

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THE NIGHT OF WAR
107

cinema, these midland women, but there is no time for either. Fuses, cartridges, cartridge cylinders, small arms, hand grenades, aeroplanes, Lewis machine-guns and the big guns must continue to be made, if the lives of our men across the sea are to be saved.

Then we look along our northern counties from the Mersey to the Wharfe, and up, perhaps, at an oblique angle to the Tyne. Some of the quaint old castles of former days are here too, looking like ghosts that have not heard the cock-crow and are surprised by the dawn. But here, also, is a line of the great towns which have stood for the finest activities of England for nearly five hundred years, and now again are standing for much of her greatest effort in her utmost need. At one end of this broad belt of Britain glycerine is being made towards the manufacture of gun cotton, and at the other end the big "Nasmyths" are being forged that hammer out our steel, the thick armour is being rolled that is to be