He led me, this soft-voiced, keen-eyed works-manager, through well-fitted wards and dispensaries, redolent of clean, druggy smells and the pervading odour of iodoform; he ushered me through dining halls long and wide and lofty and lighted by many windows, where countless dinners were served at a trifling cost per head; and so at last out upon a pleasant green, beyond which rose the great gates where stood the cars that were to bear my companions and myself upon our way.
"They seem to work very hard!" said I, turning to glance back whence we had come, "they seem very much in earnest."
"Yes," said my companion, "every week we are turning out--" here he named very many millions--"of cartridges."
"To be sure they are earning good money!" said I thoughtfully.
"More than many of them ever dreamed of earning," answered the works-manager. "And yet--I don't know, but I don't think it is altogether the money, somehow."
"I'm glad to hear you say that--very glad!" said I, "because it is a great thing to feel that they are working for the Britain that is, and is to be."
A drive through a stately street where were shops which might rival Bond Street, the Rue de la Paix, or Fifth Avenue for the richness and variety of their contents; a street whose pavements were thronged with well-dressed pedestrians and whose roadway was filled with motor cars--vehicles, these, scornful of the petrol tax and such-like mundane and vulgar restrictions--in fine, the street of a rich and thriving city.
But suddenly the stately thoroughfare had given place to a meaner street, its princely shops had degenerated into blank walls or grimy yards, on either hand rose tall chimney-stacks belching smoke, instead of dashing motor cars, heavy wains and cumbrous wagons jogged by, in place of the well-dressed throng were figures rough-clad and grimy that hurried along the narrow sidewalks--but these rough-clad people walked fast and purposefully. So we hummed along streets wide or narrow but always grimy, until we were halted at a tall barrier by divers policemen, who, having inspected our credentials, permitted us to pass on to the factory, or series of factories, that stretched themselves before us, building on building--block on block--a very town.