THE BATTLE OF FRANCE
workmen will be transferred to the war-work
system, although they will continue to be under
your control/
As for the completely new factories, many of
them have been conceived and designed by a great
engineer—a man who would have delighted
Kipling's heart and whom he would undoubtedly
have called the Master of the Machines.
'He is an astounding person/ his Minister told me,
1 send for him and say: "I want more A.A. guns.
... A whole lot more. ... So many per month
starting with July. . . " "Very well/5 he says, and
leaves for some corner of England which he already
has in mind. He sees some wide green field where
the sheep are grazing—there is a cricket pitch on it
perhaps—has it surveyed and planned, reflects for a
few minutes and then says: "That's fine. .. . 1*11 be
putting one workshop here, another there. . . . The
machinery will be there ... in two months. The
first guns will leave the factory in three months and
four days. .. ." Whereupon he has a platform of
concrete laid over the field, on which he makes his
reservations for the machine emplacements, for from
that very moment he sees his factory as if it were
already standing there completed. Then he scours
Great Britain, Europe, America, and buys the
machines he wants wherever he finds them. By the
time they have been brought home, the concrete is
ready. He has them installed in their appointed
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