the appointment of the Dilution
Commissioners, a second Munitions Act amending the first, and a vast
expansion all over the country of the organisation which had seemed so
vast before. It was not till midwinter, in the very midst of the new and
immense effort I have been describing, that the Minister of Munitions and
those working with him convinced themselves that, without another resolute
push, the barrier across the stream of the nation's will might still
fatally hold it back. More and more men were wanted every week--in the
Army and the workshops--and there were not men to go round. The second
push had to be given--it was given--and it still firmly persists.

In the spring of 1915, the executives of the leading trade-unions had
promised the Government the relaxation of their trade rules for the period
of the war. Many of the trade-union leaders--Mr. Barnes, Mr. Henderson,
Mr. Hodge, and many others--have worked magnificently in this sense, and
many unions have been thoroughly loyal throughout their ranks to the
pledge given in their name. The iron-moulders, the shipwrights, the
brassworkers may be specially mentioned. But in the trades mostly
concerned with ammunition, there were certain places and areas where the
men themselves, as distinct from their responsible leaders, offered a
dogged, though often disguised resistance. Personally, I think that any
one at all accustomed to try and look at labour questions from the point
of view of labour will understand the men while heartily sympathising with
the Minister, who was determined to get "the goods" and has succeeded in
getting them. Here, in talking of "the men" I except that small
revolutionary element among them which has no country, and exists in all
countries. And I except, too, instances which certainly are to be found,
though rarely, of what one might call a purely mean and overreaching
temper on the part of workmen--taking advantage of the nation's need, as
some of the less responsible employers have no doubt, also, taken
advantage of it. But, in general, it seems to me, there has been an honest
struggle in the minds of thousands of workmen between what appears to them
the necessary protection of their standards of life--laboriously attained
through long effort--and the call of the war. And that the overwhelming
majority of the workmen concerned with munitions should have patriotically
and triumphantly decided this struggle as they have--under pressure, no
d