worked for themselves—going up to their factories by the workmen's train in the morning, snatching a hasty lunch on the edges of their desks, and rarely returning home until the night-shift has got under way at seven or eight o'clock. Nor can it be said that in encouraging Aaron's rod to swallow up all other rods they are preparing a lucrative future for their private enterprises. The fine inscription to Chatham on the monument in the Guildhall says he "made commerce flourish through war." But a few years were sufficient to change the country's view of that kind of prosperity, and none of us know what is to happen to the munition firms after the war is over.
The great and determining fact, however, of the war industry is the employment of women in it. There has been nothing like that in the history of the world, since the days when the bare-footed and white-robed Northern women, as the ancient writers tell us, led their hosts on the long march to Italy "to dare
