LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS C. J. Bowen-Cooke, Esq., C.B.E., Chief Mechanical Engineer, PAGE Frontispiece Gauges made at Crewe and used for the Manufacture of Reversible Mechanical Tapping Machine for Fuse Caps. The Graze-Fuse, shewn in section . Rolling out Dents in 4.5-inch Fired Cartridge Case "Patriot."-A Typical Example of the "Claughton" Class of 6' 6", Six Wheels Coupled Express Passenger Engine with Superheated Boiler; Four h.p. Cylinders, 15" bore × 26′′ stroke; Boiler Pressure, 175 lbs. per sq. inch; Maximum Tractive Force, 24,130 lbs.; Weight of Engine and Tender in Working Order, 117 tons 6-inch Shell Manufacture in the New Fitting Shop, Crewe Works A Crewe Tractor in Road Trim 70 A Crewe Tractor as Light-Railway Engine on Active Service 130 Limber Hooks: Illustrating Duplex Method of Drop Forging 145 PAGE Trunnion Brackets for 6-inch Howitzer Gun, Drop Forgings 145 The 4-ton Drop Hammer Naval Gun weighing 68 tons. A Typical Instance of War. Breakdown Crane and Lifting Tackle for Shipping Small 173 178 178 An Overseas Locomotive Panel "Severely Wounded" 180 186 “We, the Working Men of Crewe, will do all that is Humanly Possible to Increase the Output of Munitions, and Stand by our Comrades in the Trenches London and North-Western Railway War Memorial, Euston 210 Manufacture of a Hob-cutter, in "relieving" or "backing off" lathe. Appendix C 66 DEEDS OF A GREAT RAILWAY CHAPTER I BEING MAINLY HISTORICAL England woke at last, like a giant, from her slumbers, And she turned to swords her plough-shares, and her pruning hooks to spears, While she called her sons and bade them Be the men that God had made them, Ere they fell away from manhood in the careless idle years." THUS it was that on that fateful morning of August 5th, 1914, England awoke, awoke to find herself involved in a struggle, the magnitude of which even the most well-informed, the most highly placed in the land, failed utterly, in those early days, to conceive or to grasp; in deathgrips with the most formidable and long-sincesystematically prepared fighting machine ever organised in the history of the world by masterminds, ruthless and cunning, steeped in the science of war. England awoke, dazed, incredulous, unprepared; in fact, to quote the very words of the Premier, who, when Minister of Munitions, was addressing a meeting at Manchester in the summer of 1915, "We were the worst organised nation in the world for this war." The worst organised nation! And this, in spite of repeated public utterances and threats coming direct to us from the world-aggressors, as to the import of which there never should, nor indeed could, have been any shadow of doubt. 66 "Neptune with the trident is a symbol for us that we have new tasks to fulfil . . . that trident must be in our fist"; thus the German Emperor at Cologne in 1907. Germany is strong, and when the hour strikes will know how to draw her sword"; Dr. von BethmannHollwegg, in the Reichstag, 1911. Or to burrow further back into the annals of the last century, one recalls a challenge, direct and unmistakable, from the pen of so prominent a leader of German public opinion as Professor Treitshke, "We have reckoned with France and Austria-the reckoning with England has yet to come; it will be the longest and the hardest." The reckoning came, swiftly and with deadly purpose. Necessity knew no law, Belgian territory was violated, Paris was threatened, the Prussian spear pointing straight at the heart of France. Unprepared, taken unawares, and, but for the sure shield of defence afforded by her Fleet, wellnigh negligible, England awoke. Happily, the nation as a whole was sound; though hampered as it was by a Peace-at-anyprice section of the Press, and honeycombed though it had become with the burrowings of the "yellow English," that "lecherous crew who, naturalised or unnaturalised, like snakes in "LEST WE FORGET" 3 the grass, sought, once the hour had struck, to sell the country of their adoption, the man-in-thestreet little knew, and probably never will know with any degree of accuracy, how near England came to "losing her honour, while Europe lost her life." To reiterate all that was written at the time with the one object of keeping England out of the fray, of making her desert her friends, and of causing her, "after centuries of glorious life, to go down to her grave unwept, unhonoured, and unsung," is naturally beyond the scope of this necessarily brief résumé of the status quo ante. But, lest we forget, lest we relapse once again to our former and innate characteristics of sublime indifference and of complacent laissez-faire, heedless of that oft-repeated warning, "They will cheat you yet, those Junkers! Having won half the world by bloody murder, they are going to win the other half with tears in their eyes, crying for mercy,"1a cursory glance through one or two of the more glaring and self-condemnatory essays at defection from the one true and only path consistent with the nation's honour and integrity, may not be held amiss. Litera scripta manent, and so he who runs may still read the remonstrance of a high dignitary of the Church, to wit, the Bishop of Lincoln, as set forth in the Daily News and Leader, August 3rd, 1914-" For England to join in this hideous war would be treason to civilisation, and 1 Carl Rosemeier, a German in Switzerland, to the Allies. Cp. Daily Mail, June, 1919. |