Work is a religious act….  But while I lay stress on this need of you all buckling to [whether it be in school, at games, in the office or on the farm] doing twice as much as you have hitherto done in this, we are in the throes of a great war which we see already that the nation that has learnt to work and not to shirk has proved that the domination of the whole civilised world was very nearly within its grasp, because amongst other things, while other nations were at play, and only half in earnest, they were solidly engaged in work.  Anyone who knows the power behind the gigantic efforts of Germany in this cruel war which they so deliberately planned and have so consistently worked for for the past 30 years knows that the secret of that power was just this—dogged determination to work.  And if we emerge from this conflict, as I pray God that we and the Allies may do, victoriously, and this, not for ourselves only, but for the happiness and freedom of all the civilised world, we shall emerge from it with this certainty staring us in the face, that unless we all of us, boys and girls and grown-ups, are willing to work harder and live simpler lives than we have in the past, we shall not be able to meet our liabilities nor to withstand the competition in other fields of labour, nor will it be possible for us to hold our own in the markets of the world which will then be thrown open irrespective of nationality to the hardest workers and the best producers.  I do not underrate the sterling capacity for work of our own British hands when they choose to put their backs into it and will keep off the drink….  But of this I am sure is the lesson of the war will be lost upon us if now and here before the war ends we do not begin to realise our chance of recovering from the awful losses, and the bankruptcies that threaten all Europe is just this, that we all register a vow, whether we are boys and girls at school, or whether we are grown-up men and women, to do a better “darrock,” work harder, not for ourselves only, but for God and King and country and find as we work joy’s soul is in the doing of it.

(Carlisle Journal, 17 December 1915, p. 7)