The book England's Effort: Letters to an American Friend was the result. At times, the book has a defensive tone, which seems strange. Why should an author in a country that had suffered in the European war for 18 months have to explain anything to someone in a country that was not involved in the fighting?
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| British women working in munitions industry (Vickers Limited factory) |
England had not only met the needs of the soldiers on the battlefield, it also significantly changed its society and government.
Ward's home front research for England's Effort included visits to munitions factories and naval yards. She later travelled to mainland Europe to observe areas where British troops were fighting.
The challenges of the war led to the creation in England of the Ministry of Munitions, which was first led by future Prime Minister David Lloyd George. Ward emphasized that England, unlike Germany, had not planned for a large war. The Ministry of Munitions was used to efficiently organize the production of the large amount of weaponry and ammunition that was needed for the battlefield.
England's Effort includes much detail about the processes and materials needed to produce ammunition. At times, you feel like you are reading a collection of case studies on management or engineering.
Ward wrote:
All over England, then, the same quadruple process has now been going on for months:
The steady enlargement of existing armament and munition works, national or private.
The transformation of a host of other engineering businesses into munition works.
The co-ordination of a vast number of small workshops dealing with innumerable metal industries of ordinary commerce, so as to make them feed the larger engineering works, with all those minor parts of the gun or shell, which such shops had the power to make.
The putting up of entirely new workshops—National Workshops—directly controlled by the new ministry, under the munitions acts.
The workplace where the ammunition was produced underwent radical changes relating to organized labor and the increasing need to employ women. Production processes had to be redesigned to maximize output.
These new processes often took experienced workers out of their regular routines. They also created workforces that mixed men and women in new ways.
Ward wrote about the new female workforce in England in a way similar to Gertrude Atherton's descriptions of French female war workers in The Living Present.
By the sheer body of work the women have brought in, by the deftness, energy, and enthusiasm they throw into the simpler, but quite indispensable processes, thereby setting the unskilled man free for the army, and the skilled man for work which women cannot do, England has become possessed of new and vast resources of which she scarcely dreamed a year ago.
Ward spend much time researching the British navy, which played an important role in the early days of World War I. It was the most developed part of the armed forces, and it was England's main protection against the war spreading to the British Isles.
After researching the home front effort, Ward travelled to mainland Europe to see the battlefield benefits of these efforts. She spent even more time in Europe in a 1917 sequel to England's Effort titled Towards the Goal.
England's Effort includes a preface by Joseph H. Choate, the former United States Ambassador to the United Kingdom. Choate also wrote an introduction for the 1915 World War I book The Evidence in the Case.
Much of England's Effort was first published in United States newspapers, including the Detroit Free Press on April 16, 1916. The book was revised several times by Ward after it was first published in May 1916.
England's Effort was published in the United States around May 27, 1916, when it was reviewed in the New York Sun. Headlines in that day's Sun included:
- ITALIANS MAKE STAND AND BIG BATTLE RAGES / Second Day of Fighting in Asiago Sector Is Inconclusive / AUSTRIAN LOSSES IN MASSED ATTACKS HIGH
- GERMANS LOSE HEAVILY IN DOUAUMONT ATTACK / French Mitrailleuse and Infantry Fire Check Advances—Teutons Claim Gains on East Bank of Meuse—Take 600 Prisoners—Deny Fort Was Lost.
- AMERICANS WIN AERIAL BATTLE WITH GERMANS / Lieut. Thaw Brings Down Fokker After Thrilling Fight in Which He Is Wounded—Corporal Rockwell Mentioned in Despatches
Online versions:
Newspaper information from Newspapers.com (https://www.newspapers.com/).
Photograph of female munitions workers from Wikimedia Commons (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Women_Working_in_the_Munitions_Industry_during_the_First_World_War_Q108474.jpg).
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