Transport and shipping were, of course, the foundation of everything.

While the British Fleet kept the seas and fought the submarine, the Directorate of Docks handled the ports, and the Directorate of Roads, with the Directorates of Railway Traffic, Construction and Light Railways, dealt with the land transport.

During the years of war we landed ten and a half millions of persons in France, and last year the weekly tonnage arriving at French ports exceeded 175,000 tons.

Meanwhile four thousand five hundred miles of road were made or kept up by the Directorate of Roads.

Only they who have seen with their own eyes--or felt in their own bones!--what a wrecked road, or a road worn to pieces by motor lorries, is really like, can appreciate what this means.