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this, I was taken to the front, which was not, what I saw, picturesque from my point of view, and also taken to see some of those parts of France which have been fought over, some of the towns which have been destroyed, and some of the land which is desolate. Then I came home, for I believe the place for an American at the present time is at home, and on my arrival I was authorized to make records similar to those I had made in England and had failed to make in France. What I have done in the United States is shown on these walls.

I have had more opportunities of seeing what is being done in war work in England, France, and the United States than anyone else--and in a fashion that no one else has been permitted to see--war in the making. Yet I do not do these drawings with any idea of helping to win the war, but because for years I have been at work--from my earliest drawings--trying to record Wonder of Work and work never was so wonderful as it is to-day, and never had any one such facilities--such aid, such encouragement given him to record its wonder--and by the Governments of the three great countries which are engaged in this incredibly horrible, absolutely unnecessary war.

Not only have I seen the Wonder of Work in these three lands to-day--but before the war I saw it in Belgium, Germany, and Italy. I have drawn it everywhere, save in Luxembourg, and there, too, I have seen it--but made no drawings--for it was so easy to get to that land--and so that country was put off for a more convenient season-a season I fear which will never come again. I am not going to make comparisons--but I am going to say that the Wonder of Work is more wonderful in the United States than anywhere else in the world to-day.

It is the working of the great machinery in the great mills which I find so inspiring--so impressive--for the mills are shrines of 

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war--though the churches now try to rival them. But the mills are the modern temples, and in them and not in the churches do the people worship. And if only the engines turned out more engines of peace--how much better would the world be--but everything made in a war factory is made to destroy and to be destroyed--only one must not think of that; if one did, the war would stop, and not everyone wants it to stop--or it would stop. But war work in America is the most wonderful work in the world and that is the reason why I have drawn some of the work I have seen--seen in these endless looms of time, where history is being woven, and I have also seen the aeroplanes and the camps and the shipyards and all are amazing.

I want to thank the Secretaries of the Navy and of War--Mr. Daniels and Mr. Baker--Mr. Creel, and the other members of the staff of the Committee on Public Information, and the various heads of the various departments of the Navy and Army, who stood my pestering and querying and obtained for me permission to visit every industrial establishment I wanted save one--naturally that was in my own city. And above all I wish to thank the man who made the whole work possible--Dr. F. P. Keppel. I should like to thank and mention by name the various officials, Government and civilian, who gave me every facility to see and to draw everything I wished--but we are at war, and I am not permitted to say where these drawings were made, and if I mentioned the names of some of the directors of these works, the places in which I made the drawings would be known. As it is, I imagine many of them are pretty well known already, but the work that is being done in them deserves to be known and shown to the people and this is the reason why I made the drawings.

Joseph Pennell.

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