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against the white walls the lathes and planes and cranes stood out. When I was there it was being fitted up, and the engineers told me, too, how fine it was at night, but I did not see it. 23. MUNITION TOWN. All over the country these munition mushroom towns are springing up; usually they are dumped down all over the plains; this one climbed and covered the hillside, and so was picturesque - the others are pitiful. A little more money would have made them as decent as the workmen's dwellings at Panama; but that was not spent, and they are the most depressing human huts I have ever seen. 24. THE ACOLYTES PREPARING THE ALTAR OF THE WAR GOD. No cathedral is more impressive, no altar finer; but instead of decking it with flowers, the men were making it ready to roll more armor plate. This drawing is but another proof that great work is great art, and that art to-day is joined to science - not religion; but the effect is just as fine. 25. MAKING ARMOR PLATE. I never had the chance to see a big plate rolled, but probably this little one was just as good. The hot metal was covered with brushwood, to burn off the cooling scale, which is like a beautiful patina upon it; and the brushwood blazed in the dark shop to the roof; while, as in all great work, only two or three men were about, the one who signaled in the foreground, the one who ran the mill and controlled its rolls, standing like a statue over all. 26. THE OLD SHIPYARD. The Admiralty would not let me draw the naval shipyards, but here were merchant ships being built. I have never seen anything like these cranes nor the way they started to build the ships out of doors anywhere, and the ships just grew, and the cranes came and helped to build them. (12) [[end page]] [[start page]] 27. MUNITIONS RIVER. The most amazing subject of all; but I was only allowed to get glimpses of it, not to go upon it, though once, when I was arrested, I was taken for a cruise on it in the hope of finding a chief constable whose existence I did not know of and to whom none of the six other local, national, county, military, munitions, and war officials, whose consent I had obtained, referred me. However, it ended all right. 28. THE GANTRY. A merchant shipyard. The gantry was more like those I have seen in Germany. If I had only been allowed to draw the naval yards I saw I could have made this series complete, and no secrets would have been given away, but a record would have been made. 29. THE GUN FORGE. When the solid metal has been roughly shaped in the furnace and press, it is again heated; and then the great chain carries it to the forge, and this monster crushes, forges, and molds it into shape - the shape of a gun. 30. THE GUN SHOP. When the guns are forged, either whole or in part, they are brought into the gun shop, bored and planed. They come in silently, high in air, and then are lowered in place, lie in rows, in piles, in masses, waiting their turn to be finished. 31. CUTTING AND TURNING A BIG GUN. All the week I was in this shop the big gun stood there on a great trestle, and all the while the great lathe or plane kept turning and turning at the end of it; once in a while a man would look at it or do something to it or pick up steel shavings, but all the while the machine kept turning and all the while nothing seemed to happen, but I suppose it did; it was all silent, ceaseless force. (13)
