British Army were three million, forty-nine thousand, nine hundred and

seventy-one--a million more than we sent--and of these six hundred and
fifty-eight thousand, seven hundred and four, were killed. Of her Navy,

thirty-three thousand three hundred and sixty-one were killed, six
thousand four hundred and five wounded and missing; of her merchant

marine fourteen thousand six hundred and sixty-one were killed; a total
of forty-eight thousand killed--or ten per cent of all in active service.

Some of those of the merchant marine who escaped drowning through
torpedoes and mines went back to sea after being torpedoed five, six, and

seven times.
What did England do in the war, anyhow?

Through four frightful years she fought with splendor, she suffered with
splendor, she held on with splendor. The second battle of Ypres is but

one drop in the sea of her epic courage; yet it would fill full a canto
of a poem. So spent was Britain's single line, so worn and thin, that

after all the men available were brought, gaps remained. No more
ammunition was coming to these men, the last rounds had been served. Wet

through, heavy with mud, they were shelled for three days to prevent
sleep. Many came at last to sleep standing; and being jogged awake when

officers of the line passed down the trenches, would salute and instantly
be asleep again. On the fourth day, with the Kaiser come to watch them

crumble, three lines of Huns, wave after wave of Germany's picked troops,
fell and broke upon this single line of British--and it held. The Kaiser,

had he known of the exhausted ammunition and the mounded dead, could have
walked unarmed to the Channel. But he never knew.

Surgeons being scantier than men at Ypres, one with a compound fracture
of the thigh had himself propped up, and thus all day worked on the

wounded at the front. He knew it meant death for him. The day over, he
let them carry him to the rear, and there, from blood-poisoning, he died.

Thus through four frightful years, the British met their duty and their
death.

There is the great story of the little penny steamers of the Thames--a
story lost amid the gigantic whole. Who will tell it right? Who will make

this drop of perfect valor shine in prose or verse for future eyes to
see? Imagine a Hoboken ferry boat, because her country needed her,

starting for San Francisco around Cape Horn, and getting there. Some ten
or eleven penny steamers under their own steam started from the Thames

down the Channel, across the Bay of Biscay, past Gibraltar, and through
the submarined Mediterranean for the River Tigris. Boats of shallow

draught were urgently needed on the River Tigris. Four or five reached
their destination. Where are the rest?

What did England do in the war, anyhow?
During 1917-1918 Britain's armies held the enemy in three continents and

on six fronts, and cooperated with her Allies on two more fronts. Her
dead, those six hundred and fifty-eight thousand dead, lay by the Tigris,

the Zambesi, the AEgean, and across the world to Flanders' fields. Between
March 21st and April 17th, 1918, the Huns in their drive used 127

divisions, and of these 102 were concentrated against the British. That
was in Flanders. Britain, at the same time she was fighting in Flanders,

had also at various times shared in the fighting in Russia, Kiaochau, New
Guinea, Samoa, Mesopotamia, Palestine, Egypt, the Sudan, Cameroons,

Togoland, East Africa, South West Africa, Saloniki, Aden, Persia, and
the northwestfrontier of India. Britain cleared twelve hundred thousand

square miles of the enemy in German colonies. While fighting in
Mesopotamia, her soldiers were reconstructing at the same time. They

reclaimed and cultivated more than 1100 square miles of land there, which
produced in consequence enough food to save two million tons of shipping

annually for the Allies. In Palestine and Mesopotamia alone, British
troops in 1917 took 23,590 prisoners. In 1918, in Palestine from

September 18th to October 7th, they took 79,000 prisoners.
What did England do in the war, anyhow?

With "French's contemptible little army" she saved France at the start--
but I'll skip that--except to mention that one division lost 10,000 out

of 12,000 men, and 350 out of 400 officers. At Zeebrugge and Ostend--do
not forget the Vindictive--she dealt with submarines in April and May,

1918--but I'll skip that; I cannot set down all that she did, either at
the start, or nearing the finish, or at any particular moment during

those four years and three months that she was helping to hold Germany
off from the throat of the world; it would make a very thick book. But I

am giving you enough, I think, wherewith to answer the ignorant, and the
frauds, and the fools. Tell them that from 1916 to 1918 Great Britain

increased her tillage area by four million acres: wheat 39 per cent,
barley 11, oats 35, potatoes 50--in spite of the shortage of labor. She

used wounded soldiers, college boys and girls, boy scouts, refugees, and
she produced the biggest grain crop in fifty years. She started fourteen

hundred thousand new war gardens; most of those who worked them had
worked already a long day in a munition factory. These devoted workers

increased the potato crop in 1917 by three million tons--and thus
released British provision ships to carry our soldiers across. In that

Boston speech which one of my correspondents referred to, our Secretary
of the Navy did not mention this. Mention it yourself. And tell them

about the boy scouts and the women. Fifteen thousand of the boy scouts
joined the colors, and over fifty thousand of the younger members served

in various ways at home.
Of England's women seven million were engaged in work on munitions and

other necessaries and apparatus of war. The terrible test of that second
battle of Ypres, to which I have made brief allusion above, wrought an

industrial revolution in the manufacture of shells. The energy of
production rose at a rate which may be indicated by two or three

comparisons: In 1917 as many heavy howitzer shells were turned out in a
single day as in the whole first year of the war, as many medium shells

in five days, and as many field-gun shells in eight days. Or in other
words, 45 times as many field-gun shells, 73 times as many medium, and

365 times as many heavy howitzer shells, were turned out in 1917 as in
the first year of the war. These shells were manufactured in buildings

totaling fifteen miles in length, forty feet in breadth, with more than
ten thousand machine tools driven by seventeen miles of shafting with an

energy of twenty-five thousand horse-power and a weeklyoutput of over
ten thousand tons' weight of projectiles--all this largely worked by the

women of England. While the fleet had increased its personnel from
136,000 to about 400,000, and 2,000,000 men by July, 1915, had

voluntarily enlisted in the army before England gave up her birthright
and accepted compulsory service, the women of England left their ordinary

lives to fabricate the necessaries of war. They worked at home while
their husbands, brothers, and sons fought and died on six battle fronts

abroad--six hundred and fifty-eight thousand died, remember; do you
remember the number of Americans killed in action?--less than thirty-six

thousand;--those English women worked on, seven millions of them at
least, on milk carts, motor-busses, elevators, steam engines, and in

making ammunition. Never before had any woman worked on more than 150 of
the 500 different processes that go to the making of munitions. They now

handled T. N. T., and fulminate of mercury, more deadly still; helped
build guns, gun carriages, and three-and-a-half ton army cannons; worked

overhead traveling cranes for moving the boilers of battleships: turned
lathes, made every part of an aeroplane. And who were these seven million

women? The eldest daughter of a duke and the daughter of a general won
distinction in advanced munition work. The only daughter of an old Army

family broke down after a year's work in a base hospital in France, was
ordered six months' rest at home, but after two months entered a munition

factory as an ordinary employee and after nine months' work had lost but
five minutes working time. The mother of seven enlisted sons went into

munitions not to be behind them in serving England, and one of them wrote
her she was probably killing more Germans than any of the family. The

stewardess of a torpedoed passenger ship was among the few survivors.
Reaching land, she got a job at a capstan lathe. Those were the seven

million women of England--daughters of dukes, torpedoed stewardesses,
and everything between.

Seven hundred thousand of these were engaged on munition work proper.
They did from 60 to 70 per cent of all the machine work on shells, fuses,

and trenchwarfare supplies, and 1450 of them were trained mechanics to
the Royal Flying Corps. They were employed upon practically every