Y saw aso a lacery which in peace-time produces woollen goods, and under-linen, but now is busy sunning out shirts, socks and pullovers for the troops. It is within auge Of a not very heavy gun. I think at least three hundred women .w" lave peen occupied there, but indication I could discover. sat they felt themselves to be working under peculiar conditions was that the permanent wave of a good many seemed to be wearing a trifle I went to a foundry which "is actually in front of the Maginot Line. women and children have been evacuated, shelters have been built n case of air-raids; and arrangements have been made to remove essential vats, should the Germans advance, 30 that it would take them the bet-ver part of a year to get the factory working again, The steel manufactured is shipped away every might so that they would ànd at best only the produce of one days work. I think what most struck me in those enormous works employing now hard on two thousand men, was the sense of emptiness. In a vast shed where work was going on at full blast there was only a.|nandful of men and they seemed to with regularity. I saw one huge hall "where last February there was but one automatic machine and where now there are one hundred and fifty.
Terrific Din When you visit one of the government factories where they make heavy guns and big shells, you find everything spacious. The machines needed to bore those huge steel rods, to manufacture those tremendous carnages, are so enormous that you have none of the crowded effect of other factories.
The din is not so terrific and although work is incessant, going on night and day, day- after day, for seven days a week, there is an old effect of dignified leisure. Everything is ona gigantic scale, These monsters, looking ridiculously like the toy guns made for children, take six months to make, and in the factory I saw they produced two a week.
I spent one morning at a powder factory. From the moment you enter one of the many small buildings you are made aware that danger is close; at the gateway your matches and lighter are taken from you; and so that you may be preserved from temptation you are asked to give up your cigarettes, The workmen wear wooden sabots in case a nail in a leather sole should strike a spark on the concrete floor. They wear black overalls which are fire-proofed, and this uniform sombreness gives them a kind of mystery.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.