"ALIEN'S" LETTER FROM ENGLAND.

Otago Witness, Issue 3399, 7 May 1919, Page 51

" ALIEN'S" LETTER FROM ENGLAND.

(Specially Written for the Ladies' Page.V REASON ANI> UNREASON. > February 10. All workers sympathise .with the worldstruggle for justice, for the 'recognition of the fact that tho labourer is worthy of his hire; but reasonable men and women do not sympathise with the shirkers who are unwilling to give a fair day's work for a fair day's pay k and rate their commonplace performance at uncommon, value. And the lower the intelligence the higher you will find the self-estimate of performance. The really great workers of the world—those to whom the world owes most —have not been the. men and! women -who have " downed tools" to demand the full recognition of their rights, real or imagined, in the critical hour of their job, and the unreasonable demands of a section of always discontented workers, whatever the conditions, at this critical hour of the securing, as far as possible, the world's peace, does the cause of Labour more harm than the malcontents consider or caije to consider, for their object is not to right wrongs but to create confusion and disorder and to hinder real progress. The unreasonable etrikes of the past weeks have alienated public sympathy j they are a form of warfare within the country and a criminal waste of time and of energy. ■ The surprise strike this last week of the London tube railways and the London and Brighton electric service was unauthorised by the union leaders. The strike was the outcome of the eight-hour day which was granted a week ago. Not content with the generous rise in pay, the war bonuses, and the reduction in the hours of work, the men now demand that meal times shall be included in the eight hours for which they are paid; but the companies' attitude ia_ that this is contrary to the agreement" come to. The President of the Board of Trade says there is* no possible justification for the strike. If the demand -were acceded to it would mean that the men would only work seven to seven and a-half hours a day, and in some cases six and! a-half hours", and be paid for eight hours. London has resented the strike as unjustifiable. Hundreds of thousands of workers, men and: women, old and. young, have during the bitterest week of the winter had long and protracted struggles to get from the homes in the outlying districts to their work and back home again at night—the long miles to Wimbledon and Putney, Hampstead, Highgate, Kew, Richmond, Chiswick, Hammersmith, and the countless other places included 'in the network of the tube stations. Many walked long miles in the driving sleet and snow, ankle deep in slush. Many, hot so strong, were overcome by the difficulties, for as early as 5 o'clock, in the dark and the snow of the bitter morning, thousands stood in queues on the chance of scrambling aboard a CSty bound bus. The buses were packed! inside and out. In the stations of the railways not included in the strike thousands waited by the hour for a chance in one of the suffocatingly-packed carriages. In the Stand, Piccadilly, Whitehall, and Haymarket the streets were long queues of people walking to their offices and West End establishments. Some of the women when they arrived were utterly' exhausted with the double fight against the weather and the distance. But the rush to get home in tho evening resulted in some extraordinary sights. Wherever there was an outgoing train or omnibus or tramway car the struggle to board it was terrific, and there were numerous accidents. Wounded and invalid soldiers were left shivering on the pavement; here and there exhausted women burst out sobhing or collapsed* in the cold. As soon as an omnibus showed up there was a rush for it, and on the second night of the strike so heavy was ■the snow that the "buses following one another looked like moving snowdrifts, for evervbody on top was covered in a white pall. For the best part of two days the snow fell heavily, and when it did not snow an icy blast chilled hundreds to the bone, many cases of illness resulting. In London and elsewhere the coldest weather for over two years has been' experienced. Chaos reigned at Waterloo when thousands of suburbanites found no trains to take them home. Most of the strikers had come out at Victoria, London Bridge, and Clapham Junction, and trains ran only at irregular intervals to Brighton, Eastbourne, Hastings, Plymouth, Crystal Palace, arid hundreds of other places, and the travelling millions that move about Greater London every day to their business were more inconvenienced than at any time during the war. Hundreds of men newly in from France, tired and cold, had to drag their kit bags across London. "We didn't strike in the trenches," was their comment. " If we had these eight-hour blighters would now

be doing the goose-step- to the Prussian drill sergeants! ' Many offers of help from private owners of motor cars were received. Hundreds of owners of cars generously came to the rescue and "ran" between given points a number of times morning and evening, giving stranded workers a lift part way or all the way to and from their work. Then the Government lorries were put at the service of the public, no fare being charged, but so grateful were the passengers that many silver collections were made for the drivers. The lorries left Trafalgar square, Charing Cross, Blackfriars, and other central parts packed with men and women from Government offices and shops, regardless of "class." The secretary of the Royal Automobile Club posted 5000 post-cards to members, with the request, " Will you please help to carry tired workers?" and there -were very few who did not respond. The starting-points were Trafalgar square, Hammersmith, Broadway, Shepherd's Bush, Golder's Green, and Highgate. Members of the R.A.C. organisation saw that there was no confusion. Thus with the Government lorries a relief service was formed to the aid of tens of thousands. The taxi drivers, who had reaped a rich harvest during' the strike, put in a protest against the use of army lorries for pas-senger-carrying. At noon on Saturday Central London seemed in a state of hopeless congestion; but it was cheerful, for sunshine and keen frost had followed the blizzard, and there was the week-end prospect of home—and the crowds got home somehow, and with a week's record behind of work persevered in under great difficulties, for which the managers of "many firms are under .great obligation.

At the same time as the tube railways strilce most of the under-waiters and kitchen hands of the West End hotels struck, including the Ritz, the Carlton, the Trocadero, the Savoy, the Criterion, Holborn Restaurant, Romano's, the Strand Palace Hotel, the Soho restaurants, Piccadilly Hotel, and a dozen others. The strike, felt 'to be unjust, has been a failure, the head waiters and old hands sticking to their post. But, like the Clyde strike and the tube strike, it has been brought about by the agitation of aliens, who are at the bottom of nearly all the .strike troubles in this country. In this case, however, the hotels have got on so well without them that 7000 of them have shut themselves out for good, for numerous girls who volunteered for the work have proved themselves such efficient waitresses that their services will be retained, and only the best of the men taken on again. One official of the Strand Palace Hotel said: " The waiters may stay out as long as they like; the hotels under this management are prepared to do without them, and probably they will never be taken back. There is no trouble among the waitresses; they know their work, and have been carrying on splendidly."

The railway strike and the snow played taio the hands of the hotel managers. Comparatively few people gave dinners In town, and many chorus girls from the Hippodrome and Apollo, who live on the tube routes, offered their services in return for accommodation. The strike of the chambermaids and kitchen hands was got over by people making their own beds, and ladies helping in the kitchen, cleaning the silver, oto., with the help of officer friends. The women, who were once absolutely at the mercy of servants, have learned many useful, things in the canteens and hospitals and other voluntary aid centres; and, as for the men, four years in the camps and trenches have taught them many useful services. When the chambermaids foundthat the hotels would not be closed they went back.

Most people are "fed up" with the endless recurrence of strikes, including many members of the unions themselves, and would be glad of some other solution of the Labour problems. A meeting of the Ehondda District Council of the Welsh National Federation of Discharged and Demobilised Sailors and Soldiers at Treherbert called upon the Government for the arrest and deportation of a Russian named Soermus, who, camouflaged as a violinist, is going about South Wales preaching: revolution. The Lord Mayor of Cardiff moved a resolution calling upon the Government immediately to revise the naturalisation and immigration laws. People might stir up trouble by advocating all that was good in Bolshevism, but he wanted such people sent back whence they came to enjoy the benefits they spoke of. Just so. And if they are not sent back the returned soldiers will take matters into their own hands, &» the Rhondda ex-service men have

threatened concerning ,the Russian violinist.

I The country is determined to keep the Government to the election promises concerning the expulsion of the Huns, and attempts to evade those promises will meet with a very determined temper. How dangerous are these aliens, whether they call themselves Russians or Poles or Germans, this country has realised to its cost, and legislation is urgently required to clear out all the Huns and Bolshevists, and keep them out. A little gang of irresponsible foreigners is trying to stir up civil war. They will not succeed. But they do succeed in making mischief. The Government is speeding up the release of the hotels taken over for war purposes. Every hotel in London will be needed for the accommodation of visitors during the peace celebrations. The Hotel Victoria and the Gordon Hotels Company are to resume business this month, and the Grand Hotel has been promised. The Surplus Government Property Disposal Board have £700,000,000 of proS>erty to sell, left over from war uses, rom telephones to factories. The surplus Government property can now be bought through a committee of skilled controllers. It has been classified under 17 headsanimals, textiles, leather, timber, iron, plant and machinery, land, buildings, etc., and will release a good many things that are short on the market. The army norses are in splendid condition, and are fetching big prices. The prices of clothes are so high that the sanction of the War Office for demobilised officers to wear uniform for one month after demobilisation is a satisfaction to many of these young men not yet established in civilian life. After a month they may still wear their overcoats if the military stripes and badges are removed and. the buttons replaced by civilian buttons. Also service dress uni- I form may be worn. This will be a con- ! venience in more ways than one, for tailors are not able to execute all their orders, also it will bo a saving of much good cloth, and it will please many men reluctant to be stripped of the badge of their service and fall into the undistinguished ranks of the "Cuthberts" again. It must be confessed that many women liked the appearance of their uniformed man better than in civilian attire. Also the demobilised men say that they miss the warmth of the- army clothes—the. heavy woollen underwear and thick * cloth, —and many of them who were free from colds in the camps and trenches are sneezing in warm rooms and offices. The frost has been 23deg and 24deg during the week-end, and London and the country generally enjoyed the alpine sports. Skating and tobogganing were in full swing. Canadians of the Forestry Corps did fancy skating at Virginia Water and Tobogganing on the hills, and at Windsor there were many skaters in the great park. Eton bovs had good sport at Ditton Park. Hackney Marshes, Hampstead, Wimbledon Park (with its 45-acre lake), Regent's Park, and many more waters are in " fine condition " from the skaters' point of view : but other folk were pinched bv the north-east wind. j