England. Improvements in all types of field artillery, in machine guns, in rifles as well as the adoption of new metallic cartridges and smokeless powders; the continuous increase in the size of armies and in the variety of armaments; the enormous demands of quick firing guns on field transport, and of the hundreds of army corps on the supply services of their governments; all the inter-play of offensive and defensive measures combined to bring into one infinitely complex system the whole manufacture of the machinery of land warfare.
The steel and steel alloy producers, the light machine tool makers, the scientific instrument experts, the carriage, cycle, motor-car and locomotive builders, the explosives and chemical producers, the electrical and civil and mechanical engineers, the cable and wire drawers, these and many more have to bring together their several and multifold services to construct field, fortress and light artillery, machine guns, automatic rifles, all sizes and kinds of ammunition, explosive charges, transport wagons, roadways and field railways; to plan and prepare fortifications and to lace these together with all the modern means of transmitting messages; to provide for the aerial scouts, the gas and fire jets, and to attend instantly to the infinite requirements of up-to-date military warfare. Into this whirlpool of industrial combination this country has been drawn, and is now racing, together with her Allies, in as many years as the Germans took decades towards that co-operative control, that centralisation of capital, that complete social ownership and direction of industry whereon alone we can erect the Socialist Commonwealth. Under inter-governmental control the production of wealth and services is losing steadily its competitive and anarchic character and is becoming a system of international production for the use of a league of governments. But the league of governments, masquerading as a league of nations, will continue to be the international general staff of the master class, organised to increase the efficiency of the exploiting system and to defend the sovereignty of its owners and directors.
Coal and Power.
We have shown above how iron and steel capitalism have been beaten on the terrible anvil of the War God into the reinforced platform and centre pillar of the Co-operative
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