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12 Eastern city, and if less picturesque it is more urgent. Electric cars come clanging along the busy thoroughfares, stop, discharge people who are going in at the gates, take up others who are coming out. Outside the rails stand the town police; inside wait the police of the Arsenal. You are challenged, questioned, summoned to a neighbouring lodge to present your credentials and register your name, a guide is assigned to you (or perhaps the Chief Superintendent himself undertakes your direction) and you begin on your tour of inspection.

It is difficult at first to realize where you are, so complete is the change from the world you have left without. You are walking between two lines of old guns on their gun-carriages, many of them broken, splintered, shattered, all red with rust or encrusted with hard-baked mire. They are back from the front for repair, with the scars of battle on their faces, and for a moment you could well believe you are walking, not in Woolwich, but