Page:Our Girls.pdf/28

 them to obey man's will; capacity to turn out the largest number and most perfect specimens of guns and shells. Man-power for the field, yes; but manpower for the forges also. To forget that in this hour would be fatal.

But Woolwich has a world of operations that are entirely suitable to women, and in a few minutes more we are in the midst of them. Here is a new shop, entirely operated by women, having been built for them since the beginning of the war. The vast place covers an area which is apparently as great as that of Trafalgar Square. Two thousand women are here, and there is room for three thousand in all. Innumerable lathes, generally of small size, cover the cemented floor, with pulleys and wheels spinning in the air above them. It is a dense forest of machinery, pulsing and throbbing and whirring and tossing as from some unseen storm.

There is at first something so incongruous in the spectacle of women operating masses of powerful machinery