it looks about as important as the Bardell v. Pickwick breach of promise action, but it was all very expensive and harmful. The jury found that Messrs. Moore, Cooke, Gamble, and Bromley did conspire together to slander and libel Messrs. Thomas, Bellamy, Lowth, Hudson, and others, and they returned verdicts for damages in various amounts ranging from £150 to £25. Then, after the damages had been apportioned and costs discussed, Mr. Justice Darling remarked:—
"My view with regard to damages, as Mr. Compston said, I think quite fairly, in his address to the jury, is that all this arose out of an attempt by the plaintiffs to smash the smaller union."
The Executive decided to appeal against the verdict as to conspiracy, and the appeal was successful, the charge of conspiracy being disproved.
The Executive met in the following week, and gave Mr. Bromley a holiday from April 23rd to May 14th, as he was seriously run down by the strain of it all.
The Executive had scarcely got away from that long sitting in April of 1917, when they had to be recalled on the question of enlistment of railwaymen, and the scheme of substitution put forward by the Army Council and agreed to by the Railway Executive, who explained that the Army Council had demanded the release of 20 per cent. of the men under 41 years of age employed by the Railway Companies. After negotiation, this demand had been reduced to ten per cent. of the men under 31, irrespective of whether married or single, and that category "A" men should be released before category "B" men, and in order to fall in with the demands of the Army Council, the companies proposed to cancel the previous scheme of release and to substitute the following:-
1.—The youngest unmarried men, under the age of 31, and fit for foreign service, to go first.2.—If there are no single men under the age of 31 available, the married men under the age of 31, with the fewest children under 14, to be selected.
