PART II. LABOUR SUPPLY 
CHAPTER III 
RECRUITING AND INDUSTRY 
THE first problem before the United Kingdom in August 1914, 
after the Navy had been mobilized and the Expeditionary Force 
had been dispatched, was to raise armies. Great Britain, with 
traditions of war in which her land forces, even if adding a decisive 
weight to the onset of her Allies, had always been numerically 
small, depended upon a small Expeditionary Force and upon 
her Fleet. Mons, Charleroi, the Retreat on Paris, and the engage- 
ments on the Aisne, made it clear that Britain must forget that 
she was an island power. Her frontiers were no longer, as her 
sea-captains in other wars had declared, her enemy’s coast-line, 
but a land-line—a sparsely-held, bitterly pressed line in the 
heart of the country of her nearest Ally. Great Britain, that 
had thought of armies in thousands, had suddenly not only to 
think of, but to constitute, them in hundreds of thousands. 
It is doubtful if at this point compulsion for military service 
was seriously considered. It is certain that, if the only question 
involved was that of obtaining the required recruits quickly, 
it was unnecessary to consider the problem seriously. When 
the appeals for the first 100,000 went up, the difficulty was 
not to find 100,000 but to choose the most suitable. The first 
rush was universal. All classes, and what, from the point of 
view of what follows, was even more important, all types of 
industry gave equally. ‘The nation as a whole set a gigantic 
seal of approval upon the action of the Government. 
But the price paid was high. The industries vital to munitions 
production may perhaps be stated in the following order, though 
the order constantly shifted with the varying requirements of 
war 
Coal and other mines. 
Iron and Steel.