the mighty labours in the plains below are intended to put an end to a torrent of rapine and violence and fraud, and seeing only that in this year of our Lord our people are submerging all their work for human welfare in the one sole effort of creating weapons of destruction, he would surely say that Britain was the kingdom of Satan, and that on the eve of the birthday of Christ Himself it was singing a hymn to the devil. The blazing furnaces of Warwickshire and Staffordshire and Durham and Northumberland would seem to be the devil's altar fires, the smoke of their chimneys his incense, and the thunder of their engines his awful orchestra.
But thank God we know better than that. We know that while thousands of factories and forges all over our islands are working day and night to destroy life, thousands of houses that stand side by side with them are working just as hard to save it. We know that while half a million British women are making muni-
