A certain anguish clings to it, as one measures the loss, and cannot yet measure the gain.
[13] May 19th.
* * * * * I have dwelt on some of the accomplished wonders--the _results_ of the war, in the material field--guns, Tanks, and aeroplanes.

But just as mechanical devices were and are, in the opinion of the Commander-in-Chief, of no avail without the fighting men who use them; so behind the whole red pageant of the war lie two omnipresent forces without which it could not have been sustained for a day--Labour at the base, Directing Intelligence at the top.

In the Labour battalions of the Army there has been a growth in numbers and a development in organisation only second to that of the fighting Army itself.

Labour companies were already in being in 1914, but they chiefly worked at the ports, and were recruited mainly from dock labourers.

Then it was realised that to employ the trained soldier on many of the ordinary "fatigue" duties was to waste his training, and Labour began to be sent plentifully to the front.