WAR WORK IN ENGLAND.

Press, Volume LIV, Issue 16113, 18 January 1918, Page 3

WAR WORK IN ENGLAND.

VISIT TO THE MIDLANDS. GREAT COLONIES OF WORKERS. LONDON, January o. At tho invitation of the Governnlent a party of Dominion journalists visited one of the busiest munition centres of the Midlands. The degree to which comparatively small motor and other factories have expanded during the past few months is astounding. Vast areas of hitherto waste land are nowcovered, not only with miles and miles of shops filled with the most modern electrical machinery, but with specially constructed-colonies of substantial houses for the accommodation of men and women employed in. the various works. At one institution, formerly employing 1500 hands, now no less than 20,000 men and women are turning out howitzers and shells of various calibres, aeroplanes, and other war material, and it is estimated that within a few weeks the number employed will be increased to 25,000. Trains convey the raw material right into these immense 6hops, and take away the completed article from the sidings of the same buildings. During a few months a complete .railway system has been completed, and is now in regular service from morning to night conveying employees to and from their homes. In a shell factory one firm in this district has a weekly output of 200,000 18-pounder high explosive shells, and 10,000 Bin shells. • This same firm is also producing 45 howitzers, and 30 motor lorries daily. A visit was also paid to the small arms factory, which is fitted with the latest electrical machinery, and has quadrupled its area since the war. One section is entirely given over to the manufacture of the French Lebel cartridge.

The Australian Repatriation department is sending two totally blind soldiers to England to take advantage of the tuition offered by St. Dunstan's Hospital for the Blind, of which Sir Arthur Pearson is the guiding spirit, says the Melbourne "Age." The soldiers are Sergeant Walsh and Private Fankhauser, and they will leave shortly by transport. Nearly all the blind British soldiers go through St. Dunstan's, where they are trained in some suitable trade which will give them the means of subsistence. A& the most efficient methods are employed there, it is probable that when these two men Teturn they will engage in the teaching of other blind soldiers in Australia. It has been the experience at St. Dunstan's that the best teacher of the blind soldier is one who is blind, and preferably __ a blind soldier, because having lost his sight under similar conditions he is better able to teach the very necessary lesson of how to be blind, which is the starting point; iii the education of all blind men.