Derby, on July 13, 1916, "without them it would be impossible for
progress to be made, but with them I believe victory can be assured."

[Illustration: ROUGH TURNING JACKET FORGING OF 6-POUNDER, HOTCHKISS
GUN]

Mr. Asquith, too, has paid his tribute to the woman munition maker
and to others who are doing men's work. In a memorable speech on
the Second Reading of the Special Register Bill, he admitted that
the women of this country have rendered as effective service in the
prosecution of the war as any other class of the community. "It is
true they cannot fight in the gross material sense of going out with
rifles and so forth, but they fill our munition factories, they are
doing the work which the men who are fighting had to perform before,
they have taken their places, they are the servants of the State and
they have aided in the most effective way in the prosecution of the
war."

Our munition women are in the shipyards, the engineering shops, the
aeroplane sheds, the shell shops, flocking in thousands into the
cities, leaving homes and friends to work in the munition cities we
have built since the war. When our great arsenals and factories empty,
women pour out in thousands. Night and day they have worked as the men
have and it has been no easy or light task. We know that still more
will be demanded of us, but we think, as our four million men do, that
these things are well worth doing for the freedom of the souls of the
nations.

In the munition factories that feeling and conviction burns like a
flame and the enemy who thinks to demoralize our men and our women by