MINERS AND WAR.

Dominion, Volume 4, Issue 1153, 14 June 1911, Page 6

MINERS AND WAR.

The interview with Mr. Semfle, of the Minors' Federation, which we publish this morning, is of interest as throwing a side-light on the views held by the leaders of this powerful Federation of Labour on the question of the obligations resting on its members in time of war. The local representative of the Admiralty is stated to have sought to obtain an undertaking from tho miners' representatives which would remove the possibility of British warships, stationed in these waters, being rendered helpless through inability to secure a coal supply in such a contingency as a miners' strike. The proposition appears to have been narrowed down to cover the emergency of a miners' strike in war time. Mb. Semple and his brother delegates regard war as a relic of barbarism and a capitalistic institution, and therefore they declined to commit themselves to any pledge. Rather would they act in unison with the miners of other countries and abolish war by the simple expedient of refusing to work the mines and supply tho needed coal for the warships of the belligerents. One cannot fail to admire the humanitarian ambition of the miners' delegates; but we fear that they arc over-estimating their powers. It requires rather a severe strain on the imagination to picture the Miners' Federation sitting in solemn conclave while the nations anxiously await its verdict as to whether a war is a "just war" or not. We are rather inclined to think that in most countries, on an outbreak of war, the coal-miners would be found ranged alongside their fellow-coun-trymen ready to do their utmost, whether in the mines or anywhere else, for their country's cause. In New Zealand, if Mn. Seiiple and his co-delegates decided that the miners should refuse to work the mines while Britain was engaged in a naval war and her warships required coal, they would' probably suffer a ludc awakening. The loyalty and patriotism of the bulk of the miners would quickly sweep away the dominance of trades union leadership and the advocates of "strike" would either find the place too hot to hold them, or, maybe, would be escorted to the pit's mouth at the point of the bayonet very glacl indeed to seek the seclusion afforded by the galleries and drives'in the mine's depths". Everyone can sympathise with every reasonable effort to prevent war; but trades union leadership has to give way to patriotic citizenship in time of national danger. Probably the proposition actually put before the Miners' Federation by the Naval authorities has been taken more seriously than its importance really warrants. To pretend, however, that the miners of New Zealand would refuse to produce coal for British warships in time of war is too absurd.