But though the vast Arsenal is at our own doors few of us who sleep in London, under the broad shadow of its wings, have any real sense of its colossal presence, its immense significance, the tremendous force it stands for. Its origin dates back to the days of other wars, but when the present war began its workers were only fourteen thousand in all, without a woman of their number. Now there are nearly seventeen thousand women within its high walls, and fifty thousand men besides.
But that is not all. Notwithstanding its fierce reality, Woolwich is a symbol rather than a geographical expression. To that centre on the Thames, three and a half miles by two and a half, with its numberless workshops, its endless avenues, and its hundred and twenty miles of internal railway, there radiate the activities of scores of associate factories round about, so that thirty thousand workers more, chiefly women (ninety-seven thousand in all), are feeding this almost fathomless reservoir. Woolwich is a great mechanical
