Britain at Work
A Pictorial Description of Our National Industries

FIREMEN OF THE Sir Eyre Massey Shaw are familiar through- out the world as names of officers who have brought to the discharge of their tasks unbounded enthusiasm and resource. By them, at any rate, the duty of fighting the flames was never treated as an opportunity for the display of mere physical courage. It was always that, but more and more it is realised that the protection of life and property from the fire demon requires brain and thought and patient organisation, without which the fire fighters would be powerless in the presence of a pitiless foe. Even the simplest drill books contain information about the laws of matter—about vacuums, latent heat, hydrostatics, the properties of air, the meaning of the co-efficient of expansion, and a maze of chemical and mechanical detail which must be studied by all those who desire to rise in their profession. Your sound fireman must not only be able to mount a tottering ladder, he must know something about the construction and materials of buildings ; not only must he be ready to stand in a fierce blast, but be acquainted with the theory of steam. In BRITISH ISLES. 219 Photo; Gregory & Co., Strand. A TYPICAL LONDON FIREMAN. OFF TO A NEW STATION. Photo: Gregory & Co., Strand, many instances the risk of fire would be far greater but for the practical advice which is given by a fire officer when new factories or theatres are being built; and the true aim of such a man is not to figure in a roaring fire, but to reduce the number of fires more and more every year. Fire protection is very different from fire extinc- tion ; it is less heroic, less conspicuous, but it is of infinitely greater import- ance to the State. This is an account of the human side of fire- manship, but it will help us to understand the tremendous forces at the disposal of the metropolitan service to mention that the staff have within their reach 73 steam fire engines,.