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108
OUR GIRLS

the breastplate of our battleships, while in dockyards as big as Marston Moor, the great battleships themselves are being built in every operation, from their solid keel to the crackling wireless apparatus that is to quiver and crack at their mast heads. Between these two, along the banks of rivers and canals, are the immense mills with innumerable eyes, which in times of peace took cotton and wool from all parts of the earth and sent them back in textile goods to the limits of the sea, and are now working, day and night, by the help of tens of thousands of women, to clothe and re-clothe our vast armies and the armies of our Allies. The women of Lancashire and Yorkshire love to dance, but there is no time for that, for the winter has come and the trenches are deep with rain, and if our men are to fight they must be kept warm and dry.

Then we look along the great border country from Berwick to the Brigs o' Ayre, where Burns whistled to the plough, and where Wallace and Bruce made