the news from all fronts is so very encouraging, can only be attended with the gravest consequences to this country and to our Allies. . . .

It is gratifying that only a small section of the railwaymen have not accepted the settlement made by their leaders, and the thanks of the government and the nation are due to the railwaymen who are loyally abiding by the agreement to perform their duties in a spirit of devotion to their country's interests which has been characteristic of railwaymen during the course of the war.

The government announced that it proposed to use the military and naval forces to secure the maintenance of essential service. The Great Western issued notice to the effect that unless men of military age immediately presented themselves for work, their exemption certificates would be cancelled. An interim injunction was secured to prevent the unions from paying strike pay; 3000 men of the London Rifle Brigade were dispatched in trains manned by Royal Engineers and were bivouacked in the streets of Newport. But the only clash came when a number of wounded soldiers visited the local I. L. P. headquarters, and mistaking a knot of railwaymen for the strike committee, cried "over the top" and made a rush for them, belaboring them with their sticks and crutches.

The strike was fought and terminated not by these manifestations of authority, but by the spear-head of leadership of a single man, who posted to Newport, spoke to the crowds, forced his way into the strike committee, obliged them to let him lay the whole case before the men and nailed various untruths that had circulated. That man was Thomas. He stood up to an hour's crossquestioning and his replies were cheered again and again. He gave out a statement to the press in which he said:

I desire to warn any of our members who may feel inclined to act in sympathy with the strikers that this is a strike against the government as well as against the railway companies and their own union. It occurs at a time when the fortunes of the war seem

brightest, and when the dawn of peace appears near. Words cannot express my disappointment and grief that the railwaymen are, by this unfortunate action, prejudicing a record of war service as proud as any that can be claimed by other workmen. . . . I am sorry, but I can understand the bitterness that has been displayed by the wounded soldiers and the public. My task is a difficult one, but I shall continue to struggle here to prevent the spread of a policy which will be as disastrous to the men as it is fatal to the interests of the country.

It was a fellow trade unionist in the government who, with the stoppage of traffic on the Great Western, got food through on motor

lorries, and churns of milk to the London hospitals; a fellow member of the new majority who in a "message to the strikers" backed up Thomas in his difficult and successful task. The message from Clynes read:

What workmen would have looked on as a crime in the first year or two of the war, is not less an offence against their reputation and the national interest, now that democratic principles are being so gallantly defended by millions of our men in the field. ... Ă few years ago railway men fought valiantly and successfully to get recognition for their leaders and executives. They therefore ought now to recognize and respect the bargain made by their leaders for them. Let them think not only of the credit of their unions, but of the appalling prospect of what our food situation would be if supplies are seriously checked by railway dislocation I while the war continues.

Thomas, the succeeding day, carried his cause to a meeting at Cardiff of the South Wales council of the union, a body representative of all the branches in the district. The correspondent of the Manchester Guardian wrote of the “undaunted stand" and "courageous speech" of this two fisted fighting man, with his hard sayings, "wrestling strenuously with the judgments of both strikers and nonstrikers."

The London Times' report of his speech at Cardiff follows:

Mr. Thomas, who was greeted with cries of "Good old Jim," said the decision to strike was conveyed by him to the government and he received the verdict of the War Cabinet in these words: "We accept the challenge of these men, not only as a challenge to your union and to your own authority, but as a challenge to the government, and not a comma of the agreement will be altered, even if the whole of the railwaymen of the country stop. What is more, let it be distinctly understood that we are going to discharge our functions as a government regardless of consequences." Mr. Thomas continued: "That is the issue you have to face. That is the issue I am going to face, and I tell you with all deliberation and sincerity that if I were Prime Minister, if I were a member of the War Cabinet (which I might have been), I would do precisely the same." (Cheers.) ". . . Are you going to strike at the backs of your own lads, and give encouragement to Germany? . . . You have forced 5,000,000 of your comrades, 100,000 of your fellow-workmen to hate your very name. This act has been done, let it be observed, by people who take no responsibility of leadership. I only desired to hold my position in your union so long as I had the confidence of the men"("You have it")-"but this action shows I have not. I am going to see this out; then I cease to be your general secretary." ("No, no.") "I cannot go on hammering as I have for

years, with no rest, exhausting myself physically and mentally, fighting your battles regardless of personal considerations, only to be flouted at a critical hour."

The meeting, with only a dozen dissentients, voted to return to work at once; voted their confidence in Thomas. But he was not through. The strike ended, he submitted his resignation to the executive committee of the National Union of Railwaymen, on the ground that no other course was open to

one who believes in constitutional government in trade unionism; who believes that the same standard of honor demanded from the other side is the least we are prepared to give ourselves.

Moreover, whoever is responsible for the recent strike, a strike as wicked as it was dangerous, are people whose policy and methods must not only be challenged, but must be fought. Otherwise, we shall very soon reach a stage in this country similar to that through which Russia is now passing. Therefore, in taking this course, I do it as a challenge to such methods, and am prepared to bear all the consequences of my action.

The executive committee of the N. U. R. promptly declined to accept his resignation, but it was only expressions of confidence from 90 per cent of the membership which reconciled him to retaining office. His good faith as a labor leader, his constitutional principles as a trade unionist, his stand on the war and his belief with Henderson in a united "moral and political offensive" as the channel for working-class action to secure a democratic settlement-all were at stake, and he rang true to that conception of British trade unionism which had found expression in its jubilee congress at Derby.

'Following the armistice, the evacuation of France and Belgium and the surrender of the German fleet, the railwaymen ended the strike truce they had faithfully kept as a national body throughout the war, and in December, 1918, under Thomas' leadership, demanded and won recognition of the principle of the 8 hour day.

CHAPTER XVIII

THE RIGHT STRIKES BACK

WHEN James Wilson, chairman of the mission of the American Federation of Labor, which visited England in the spring of 1918 at the expense of the British government, reached "an Atlantic port" on his return, he said in an interview with a reporter of the New York Tribune:

When I speak of labor, I mean the actual workers of Britain. There is, of course, a Labour Party, which is a purely political organization headed by Ramsay MacDonald, Arthur Henderson and Philip Snowden.

He was quoted in the New York Sun:

There are a certain class of people who term themselves leaders of labor who are in reality not workingmen, but members of a labor political party. The mission had opportunities to speak to thousands of workingmen, and in all cases the policy of the American Federation of Labor, was received with cheers and practically unanimous approval. The purpose of the mission was to oppose the pacifist movement among labor abroad and to report the situation back to Samuel Gompers. The British workingmen are to have a new labor party, which will rid the ranks of the workers of the politicians who now are endeavoring to exploit labor.

Wilson then proceeded to name Henderson as one of these politicians.

These comments, seeking to drive a wedge into British labor and split it away from its majority leadership, were not only badly mixed and untrue; they were dangerous. Shouted across three thousand miles of water, like repartees over the back-fence, they were an aggravated continuation of the lectures against socialism and internationalism to which members of the American delegation treated British industrial centers like the Clyde. They gave a misleading account of British labor opinion, which had expressed itself through its two great bodies in unison. They were an attack on the Labour Party, as the weak and erring parasite of the industrial movement.

Whereas, the Labour Party is the political expression of British trade unionism. They were an attack on Arthur Henderson as the personification of that parasitism. Whereas, Arthur Henderson represented the Iron-founders' Society in the party conferences, and had a war record covering four years.

There was, for example, a moment when the shop stewards' movement was riding the Clyde-that congeries of shipbuilding and engineering trades-like wildfire. Henderson helped Lloyd George in backfiring. In doing it, he incurred the enmity of David Kirkwood, who, as set down in Chapter XIV, was "convener" of shop stewards. But he did it without throwing the entire shop stewards' movement to the revolutionary left. This is only one of the many services Henderson had rendered the nation. He could not have held labor together if he had swallowed government policy whole, with its weather-cock expediency in swinging from knock-out blows to the abandonment of Russia, from Irish Home Rule to Irish conscription.

The visit of the American labor delegation was an incident in the cross currents in British politics throughout 1918. To these we can turn, now that we have followed the course of the responsible labor leadership in the economic field. Just as that leadership had to reckon there with bureaucratic impingement from one side and sporadic upheaval from the other, so in the political field the new majority had to reckon with those elements which demarked themselves when Henderson broke with his fellow members of the war cabinet on Russian policy and on the issue of an inter-belligerent labor conference.

We have seen how, at that parting of the ways, in August, 1917, the government labor group represented by Barnes, Roberts, and Hodge gathered the skirts of denunciation about them and took up positions in opposition at the extreme right, while Philip Snowden, chairman of the Independent Labour Party, served warning from the extreme left that his impatient following would go its own gait; how, at Nottingham in January (1918), party regularity and the appeal of the new "diplomacy of democracy" brought an overwhelming vote behind the two-edged war aims program; how at London in February the prospect of a labor government and the vision of a reconstructed England carried the new constitution with its compromise between constituent trade union bodies and an open membership; how at London in June (1918) another compromise left it open for labor members to remain in the Ministry while giving the Labour Party freedom to contest bye-elections against coalition candidates. As result, at the end of twelve months-August to August—the new majority, while holding the ground occupied