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upon a child pushing a small wheelbarrow on the sidewalk and ordered him to join the rest of the traffic in the roadway, was greeted with the retort: 'Garn awye! I seen a real 'un.'

Our own Will Rogers, who chanced to be in London, said in an interview to the Daily Mail: "The longer the strike, the calmer grew the calm. I got excited following your calm up. The The calmer you got, the more excited I got. The strikers I found to be patriotic Englishmen, as unwilling for disorder as any.'

Of course, this struggle, like every such conflict, had its pathetic or appealing aspects. Some of these were recorded by Evelyn Sharp in a 'Diary of the Strike' published in the New Leader, a Labor weekly. Such was the account of over sixty railmen known to one of the writer's friends, whose pensions were due to begin the following month, but who 'risked everything and came out "to stand by the miners'

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this in pleasing contrast to the schoolboys of the middle class, who seemed to have invaded London in their best clothes in order to rush around in other people's motor cars.' The strikers simply derided the precautions of the Government, as when one open-air speaker, pointing to the

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barricades erected around the Smithfield Market, described them to his hearers as 'not to keep you and me from looting the meat, comrades, but to keep the sausages from running away.' Among the amusing contrasts was a line of empty lorries corted by police entering the market just when a man emerged pushing a wheelbarrow loaded with sides of beef and trundled his cargo down the street to his shop, unguarded and unmolested. Witness, also, the following entry from this diary:

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lines were being repaired, and proceeded to remove loose rails and heaps of stones. The inspector explained to a bystander that this was being done for fear of their being used as weapons. The strikers who looked on - presumably the people who would wield the weapons but for the wise forethought of our rulers - hugely enjoyed the spectacle of these amateur navvies, who must have resembled Walter Crane's pictures of the horny-handed, except that, according to my informant, they wore gloves. A church in the same neighborhood was crammed to overflowing, this evening, with strikers and their families. The Socialist vicar preached magnificently about God and Mammon; and a Litany of Intercession for everybody, including strikers, employers, and police, was responded to with commendable impartiality, I thought, under the circum

stances.

We are forced to form our opinion of the termination of the strike principally from sources unsympathetic to its leaders. The Saturday Review thus summarizes the reasons which decided the Trades Union Council to end the battle with dramatic suddenness. 'Justice Astbury's judgment weighed heavily with them, and, together with Sir John Simon's speech, made them fear legal action for damages. Equally operative in helping them to a decision was consideration of the consequences of calling up their "second line." Either there would have been a poor response, and the movement would have cracked, or there would have been a solid response, in which case the consequences might have been appalling. For the second line included postal, telegraph, and telephone hands, and power and light workers, and without any of these services the country would indeed have been plunged in chaos.' The Spectator characterized the official report of the visit at which the Labor leaders surrendered to the Premier as 'strangely interesting reading.' 'The Prime Minister did not beat

about the bush as Grant did at that famous, embarrassing interview at Appomattox Court House when Lee came to make his surrender. He at once asked Mr. Pugh to explain the visit. Mr. Pugh said that the General Council of the Trades Union Congress had been watching for an opportunity to resume the coal negotiations, and that they had recognized such an opportunity in the Prime Minister's wireless address to the nation. . . . "We are here, sir," he went on, "to say that this general strike is to be terminated forthwith in order that negotiations may proceed." The Prime Minister replied: "I thank God for your decision, and would only say that I do not think this is a moment for lengthy discussion. I shall call my Cabinet together forthwith." Mr. J. H. Thomas, addressing the Prime Minister, said:

'You answered us in the way we knew you would answer us - namely, that just as you recognize we have done a big thing in accepting the responsibility, we felt sure the big thing would be responded to in a big way. Assistance from those who were opposing Parties ten minutes ago is essential to start things on the right road again. Your assistance is necessary, our assistance is necessary. We intend to give it. We trust your word as Prime Minister. We ask you to assist us in the way you only can assist us, by asking employers and all others to make the position as easy and smooth as possible. The one thing we must not have is guerrilla warfare.'

We have previously referred to the jubilant comment of the Fascist press of Italy upon the strike as an evidence of the breakdown of democracy. The Moscow press piped in the same key as Rome. Pravda predicted enthusiastically: "The gradual turning of the economic strike of the trade-unions in England into a political battle is inevitable in case of the further development of the conflict.' The Third In

ternational published a proclamation to British Communists, in the May 8 issue of Izvestia, declaring that 'whatever may be the immediate end of the movement, the Bolshevization of the proletarian advance guard will proceed now with much greater speed than hitherto.' Parenthetically, the Laborist London Daily Herald, in a poststrike leader headed, "Those Unforgettable Nine Days,' insisted that the strike was 'a greater success than anyone had dared to hope,' because ‘it struck dismal apprehension into the hearts of the oppressors. The class that lives by owning felt a chill down its spine. It changed the whole perspective of the system in which that owning class was the principal object. Now it is the workers who loom large and impressive. The owning class has shriveled up. It has suddenly become paltry and small.'

Both Germany and France watched the conflict with mixed feelings, though solicitude for its speedy settlement seems to have been deeper and sincerer in Berlin than in Paris. In the first place, Germany feared that growing chaos in England would hearten her own powerful Communist Party; and, in the second place, she wished nothing to delay the recovery of world prosperity. The French attitude was more self-centred. Sisley Huddleston reported from Paris in the last days of the conflict: 'On the whole, I believe French sympathy to lie rather with the workers. There is a special reason for this. The Radicals and Socialists have initiated an international policy which cannot now be reversed, and they think that this policy can be worked out better with a Labor Government than with a Conservative Government.' This feeling would not have existed, however, had the French not been convinced that a social revolution was impossible across the Channel. A German

diplomat who chanced to be in Paris during the strike thus summarized sentiment as he found it there: 'People here view the English general strike with very mixed feelings. On the one hand, they look upon it as a Communist trial of strength, and consequently wish the Government a quick victory. On the other hand, they hope that if it is protracted the pound sterling will fall.' To this he added in his own behalf: 'I am personally convinced that the strike was this time a mere blow in the water. Yet I feel equally certain that it is not the last general strike that England will see, but merely a first skirmish in the greatest economic battle that the Island Kingdom has ever witnessed.'

But what of the political, personal, and pecuniary aftermath of the strike? It left Parliament, if we may trust The Nation and the Athenæum, with 'a good conceit of itself. It was the centre where everything was done, the only institution that mattered, the one source of reliable news. The House feels renewed confidence in its future, for nothing seems now in sight that can shift it from its place in the Constitution.' The Conservative Saturday Review believed that the Labor Opposition in the House had 'suffered severely in credit,' and added, "The moral of the general strike is that the extremists are not only in the unions, but in a position of some authority in the unions,' and therefore in the Labor Party. Nevertheless, it concluded that 'the immediate result of the strike has been to strengthen the intellectual Socialist elements in the trade-union party at the expense of the tradeunionist straddlers and extremists.' A Spectator contributor described the Labor delegation in the House during the latter days of the strike as 'bedraggled and utterly wretched' and leaning on Mr. Baldwin ‘as a sick man leans on his nurse.'

Although Sir John Simon, whose great speech in the Commons, arguing that a general strike was illegal, was decisive on the juristic side of the conflict, chances to be a Liberal, his Party, according to the Saturday Review, has been hopelessly divided and compromised by the issues raised. Lloyd George's syndicated article in the American press predicting dreadful things for England was cabled back across the Atlantic and aroused a storm of indignation there. Meanwhile Lord Oxford and Lord Grey published opinions in the Government British Gazette that were extremely unpalatable, not only to Labor, but to the more Radical wing of the Liberals. The result has been to widen the longexisting rift in their ranks until it seems unbridgeable. The Nation and the Athenæum said: 'One incidental effect of the strike has been to renew dissensions within the Liberal Party. On the one side, deep resentment is felt against Mr. Lloyd George, whose persistent criticisms of the Government are denounced as factious and as showing an indifference to the supreme issue raised by the general strike. On the other side, the complaint is made that the main phalanx of Liberal leaders was false to the spirit of Liberalism in rallying so solidly to the Government's support.' It contended, however, that 'Mr. Lloyd George, in our opinion, comes out of the affair with credit. We do not think he got his emphasis right; but he is not the man to balance his sentences carefully against misinterpretation, still less to protect himself against possible confutation by events. But he said the things which it was especially the duty of Liberals to say; and in saying them he braved, what in practice it is hardest for a man to brave, the disapproval of those with whom he was most intimately associated.' The Saturday Re

view naturally characterized the War Premier's action as that of 'a reckless gambler staking heavily on a final throw in the hope of recovering all his losses.' He banked on a near revolution, and his 'whole calculation was vitiated by the short duration of the trouble.' To this the Outlook chimed in, after commending the effect of Sir John Simon's great speech, which, 'so far as any one act can be said to have decided the issue,' performed that service: 'Mr. Lloyd George, on the other hand, has compromised himself badly, and men will neither forget nor forgive his attitude. His real following in the Liberal Party now consists of one, Commander Kenworthy, and both would probably feel more at home in the Labor ranks.' Even the Liberal Westminster Gazette referred to the Welsh statesman's 'temperamental waywardness,' and took up the cudgels in favor of Lord Oxford. Last of all, Ramsay MacDonald, somewhat soured by his Party's political miscarriages, is reported to have declared

that this Liberal ally would be more properly among the Communists than the Laborists. It is risky to form conclusions from the press, however, for there are indications that a majority of the Liberals stand behind Lloyd George; and the Labor Party, instead of losing political prestige, has captured the Hammersmith seat from the Conservatives by a large majority in a byelection fought specifically on the strike issue.

Great satisfaction was felt when Mr. Churchill announced, a few days after the termination of the strike, that its direct cost to the national exchequer would not exceed £750,000, and might be less, and that no additional taxation was likely to be necessary. This sum represented the direct expenditures of the Government for extra police and other protective measures. Optimists argue that the strike was too brief to throw the nation's industrial machinery seriously out of joint, and that business losses will soon be made up by an increased spurt of activity.

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ENGLAND AT BAY

BY A GERMAN AND A FRENCH OBSERVER

[THE first of the two following articles is by an anonymous special correspondent of the Berlin Social-Democratic Party organ, Vorwärts, and appeared in the May 8 issue of that journal, having been received by airplane from London. The second article, by Pertinax, appeared in the Clerical Conservative L'Echo de Paris of May 10 and 12, and brings the story down to the day before Labor called off the strike.]

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Berlin, Monday, May 3. Evening. — The passenger train to Vlissingen is by no means crowded. Most Englishmen who have had occasion to leave Germany during the last few days have naturally tried to get to London before the fatal hour-midnight Monday. Only a very few of the unavoidably delayed are going to-night. When I ask them if we are likely to have difficulty getting from our landing port to London they laugh confidently, as if the question were a joke: "There'll be plenty of trains, especially between London and the Channel ports.'

'But,' I suggest, 'the strike call of the railway unions makes an exception only of food trains.'

until midnight, but there is a brief notice in the Nieuwe Rotterdamsche Courant saying: 'This evening steamer service between the Hook of Holland and Harwich has been suspended.' That is an English line. The Dutch line from Vlissingen to Folkestone is still running. This is the first shock to the self-confidence of my British fellow travelers.

Vlissingen, Tuesday noon. - Altogether only thirty or thirty-five passengers are taken on board the Princess Juliana. In addition she carries twice that number of mail bags and great cases of freshly slaughtered Holland meat. Doubtless the first concern of the British Government is to get the last part of our cargo to London. Next comes the mail, and last of all the passengers.

Off the English coast, Tuesday afternoon. The sea is decidedly rough, but the Dover cliffs are in sight. We pass the town at a distance of about three hundred yards and can see the water front clearly. The harbor is absolutely deserted and lifeless. Not a crane is moving, not a factory chimney is smoking.

Folkestone, Tuesday, 7 P.M. - We can take in the seriousness of the

'Oh, well, all the railway employees crisis before the steamer stops. The are n't in the unions.'

Rosendael, Tuesday, May 4. Morning. The Netherlands papers print long reports of the big debate in the House of Commons, but little actual information concerning the strike itself. The latter did not officially begin

London express that ordinarily stands waiting for our boat on the wharf is nowhere in sight. The railway station is deserted. A few well-dressed ladies and gentlemen stand on the dock and wave to some of our English passengers. A little later the immigration and cus

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