Doing their Bit

It is instances of this sort that make one realise the ugly “if.” The real gravity of the position, the issue hanging upon them, cannot possibly be fairly understood by any war-workers who slack, or restrict output, or seriously concern themselves over such points as are constantly being raised about pay, hours, and status.

It seems so impossible that the critical nature of the war should not by now be understood, but I am sure that some of the war-workers do not even yet fully understand, and they may easily be misled into thinking munitions so plentiful and future supplies so promising that all danger of a shortage is over. Let them remember that our Army that was short of munitions was a very small affair compared with the Army of to-day. That production which left, say, 200,000 men woefully short a year ago may be multiplied exactly twenty times and still leave an Army of four millions just as exactly and woefully short as ever. And it is going to take many multiplications by twenty to raise us from the hopeless shortage that kept us standing still last year, spending flesh and blood in a desperate endeavour to make up for the lacking steel and iron, and holding our bare own, to raise us from that to being an irresistible force capable of advancing and breaking through miles of trenched and barbed-wired and fortified positions, through hordes of well-armed, unbeaten men, through a flaming barrier of shells and bombs, through liquid fire and gas and machine-gun and rifle bullets. The war-workers have to keep going more than the one front of a year ago. There is now the Western Front, the Balkans, East Africa, Mesopotamia, to say nothing of Egypt or any other battle-fronts that may develop. Our war-workers are doing wonders, are turning out mountains of munitions – but so, you may be very sure, are the enemy war-workers. They had a very long start of us, had munition factories and machines built and running, and they have been increasing these while we have been improvising and starting ours. We cannot doubt but that the German and Austrian shops are also running night and day, that the need for an enormously increased output has long since been seen and provided for, that their workers are going all out to give their armies a preponderating supply so that they may meet and beat the best our fighting and our working men can do.

The Front has no shadow of doubt about being able to beat the Germans, if our workers can beat the enemy workers. “Give us the stuff we need,” says the Front, “and we’ll give you victory.” The German armies are probably saying the same to their workshops, and the matter boils down to a battle of the workshops – ours and theirs. The British Army doesn’t want anything more than a fair show, and only the British workers can give it them. The Army is quite and cheerfully ready and willing to hunger and thirst, to perish from cold and bitter soaking wet, to wallow in the mud and misery of the trenches, to endure bodily discomfort and aching fatigue, long marches and longer outpost watchings, and lack of sleep and rest, to suffer frost-bite and disease, loss of limbs and sight, dreadful wounds and death, so that we may win the War. They can and will win, if the war-workers will back them up, will throw in the last ounce of energy and determination they possess, will fling aside the last atom of slackness or self-indulgence or bickering or selfishness. The fighting men are considering nothing – no question of short pay or long hours, or “what will happen when the war’s over,” or what individuals may profit by their sacrifice, or their own sacrifices and suffering – nothing but the winning of the War. And the War is as good as won, though the full price is yet to pay, if, and only if, the war-workers will think and act the same as the fighting men. Will they? The answer is with them, and with them only.