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42. MADE IN GERMANY: THE GREAT CRANE.

I knew it; I had drawn the twin brother of this monster two years before in the docks at Hamburg, and when I asked the engineer if it was not so, he said it was, and also pointed out how the smaller cranes put up previously showed the growth of the Wonder of Work.

43. GUN TESTING.

They took me to the testing ground, but on a day when there was no testing, for they told me I should have to go into a bomb-proof cellar, put stoppers in my ears, and keep my mouth open, and even then would see nothing, and that there was nothing anyway but a puff of vapor to see. So I went when they were getting the gun ready and made the drawing.

44. MUNITIONS CITY.

How wonderful is all this energy, this smoke, this color! How the city, set upon its hills, reveals and conceals itself! Yet its frown is terrible. Lately I read an art book which contained a few lines of description of these cities and the country where they are, for in order to show "the terror" of the land the author wrote of "the black smirched valleys," "the gloomy sky" under which "the train darted through forests of smoking chimney stacks" and over grimy, trough-like streets. That these might be wonderful, pictorial, never occurred to him.

45. BY-PRODUCTS.

The new sort of coke ovens are the most pictorial subjects I saw — when they are at work — because they are all effect, all bathed and wrapped in fume and steam and smoke; and these make for me and give to me my motives, though there is great work behind them.

46. PEACE AND WAR.

What would Ruskin have said to this? The beautiful old abbey, built in, surrounded by, yet still dominating the munition factories? What would he have said to the aeroplane, noisily soaring over it? I neither know nor care. I only know it was a fine composition as I saw it that morning, and so I drew it.

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47. THE BALLOON SHED.

Around and about, all over the plain, the birds and bugs lie at rest, their wings making wonderful lines against the sky, wonderful colors on the grass. Then they stir and hum, and skim over the ground, and roar, and rise into the air, and sail away, and only the huge empty shed remains, and the long box on a lorry which, too, is leaving, with the sign on it: "Mesopotamia via Cardiff," whither another air machine is being shipped.

48. THE BIG BUG.

Horrible and awful it stood in its lair, ready to be started on its voyage of destruction.

49. SHOT.

This is what I see every night out of my window — have seen for two years and some months, and would give anything never to see again.

Yet Wells says it — the drawing of the shot tower — is the only commonplace subject among them all.

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