Evening Post. FRIDAY, JANUARY 21, 1916. THE WORKERS AND THE WAR

Evening Post, Volume CXI, Issue 17, 21 January 1916, Page 6

Evening Post. FRIDAY, JANUARY 21, 1916. THE WORKERS AND THE WAR

The essay on " The War and English ■ Life," in the current issue of the Round Table, opens with a remark about the difficulty experienced by foreign observers in forming any coherent impression of the state of the popular mind in Great Britain, and justly observes that "the news that can be summarised and cabled day by day is not English history, or even the raw material of English history." " Real history," the writer proceeds, "is to bo found in the background, in the movement of large impersonal forces, arid in the influences that affect the life and spirit a.nd temper of the body of the people." The aim of the essayist is to fill in this background. He writes, for the rank and file of the democracy, and with a familiarity and sympathy .with their point of view which are remarkable in one who is probably not of the number himself. It is much the kind of article that Mr. G. D., H. Cole, the Oxford don, whose book on "The World of Labour" is one of the most striking of recent studies of the Labour question, and who has followed it up since the war by " Labour in War Time," might have written.

"Despite political labels," says the Round Table essayist, " the working class is, and is always likely to remain, the most difficult section of the population to mov«."' But when it once moves it i& very hard to stop. For months, "while nimbler'brains were redrawing flic map of Europe," the working man wa» troubled with doubt® as to whether we ought to be at war at all, and it was not till the sinking of the Lusitania. that his last misgiving on the subject disappeared. " Since the Lusitania it has not been a question of working-class opinion but of national resolve; not a question of discussing details or calculating chances, either of diplomacy or strategy, but of going cheerfully on through an unknown future till the world is rid of a monstrous evil." And since the doubts of the working class -were dispelled the writer is of opinion not only that it has been as determined and as ready] to> make sacrifices as ttto well-to-do\ but that ite temppr has been " distinctly the more buoyant and confident of the two."- For this statement, the Ronnd Table is taken to task by the Spectator's reviewer. We are certainly not competent to adjudicate, but if we may accept the reviewer's estimate that " there are probably about 3 per cent, of slackers and 3 per cent, of croakers in every class," neither poor nor rich have much to be ashamed of.

A specially interesting section of the Round Table article is devoted to "Mr. Lloyd George and the Trade Unions." While fully appreciating the combination of admirable qualities which makes Mr. Lloyd George "one of" the country's greatest assets in this hour of need," the writer is decidedly of opinion e that in his address to the Trades Union Congress tho Minister of Munitions pressed his indictment of the conservatism and tyranny of the unions too far. He considers that the Minister's instances " were, to say the least, unfortunately selected " ; that the speech, " with its wrong perspective and misleading total impression," was unjust to organised labour; and that it did much harm by ministering to the prejudices of those who were already biased against the working classes. Without denying that there liavo been grave shortcomings on the part of the unions, the essayist shows clearly both that these defects have been exaggerated, and that if the trade unionist * has not always kept his side of the bargain, "the State has not beeii narupuloua ■ about keeping jlie

other." Three points were guaranteed by tho Government—the restriction of the profits of employers, the restoration of trade union regulations after the war, and the State control •# wages and conditions in the trades in question. The 6econd of these points' is a matter for the more or less distant future, but as to the other two, the unions are shown to have legitimate grievances in the action, or inaction, of the Government. Wo have not space to discuss the details of a very able and judicial argument, but the reader who is wise will look for them in the article itself.