half, and which demanded, again and again, his personal, inter- vention; the social reforms promised in the joint manifesto, which were to make Britain, in his own words, " a land fit for heroes to live in "; the difficulties of finance and of controlling the extrava- gant expenditure which war habits had generated; and finally the settlement, if possible, of Ireland and the Irish question. He laid down his policy on the labour upheaval in the debate on the Address in 1919. The Government would welcome a general investigation into the whole causes of industrial unrest; one in- dividual trade could not be considered without reference to the rest. A great increase in some essential ingredients like coal or transport might easily destroy the chances of restarting Brit- ish export industry. Every demand which was put forward by any body of workmen would be examined fairly and carefully by the Government with the view of removing any legitimate griev- ance ; but the Government were determined to fight Prussianism in the industrial world, as they had fought it on the continent of Europe, with the whole might of the nation. He had at once to deil with a threatened strike of coal-miners, and his was the en- ergy which promptly set up the Sankey Commission to avert a coal- miners' strike in the early spring of 1919, and got the Comm's- sion to issue a preliminary report in three weeks. He sought also at once a wider remedy. He called an Industrial Conference of masters and men, and persuaded it to set up a provisional joint committee. He addressed this body at its first meeting, terming it a peace congress, and saying that with so much of the world in pieces, Britain might have to save civilization. It was necessary to find the legitimate boundary between wages and hours on the one side and adequate production on the other. The huge war debt must be met by saving or by increasing productivity. Em- ployers and workmen should come to an understanding by some sort of dead level of talk. Though the committee came to an agreement on the basis of a legal 48-hour week, minimum time rates of wages of universal application, and the creation of a permanent industrial council, half masters half workmen, to advise, the Government on industrial questions, the article on ENGLISH HISTORY shows that this well-intentioned effort was of no avail to calm the unrest.
To take one or two instances of his methods. Of the railway strike in Aug. 1919 he said that he could recall no strike entered into so lightly, with so little justification and with such entire disregard of the public interest. He pointed out that the State was running the railways at a loss due mainly to the enormous increases in the wages of railway workers since the beginning of the war. He took strong measures and succeeded in stopping the strike after 10 days, though promising hardly any further concession than was previously offered. He declined absolutely to adopt the final report of the Sankey Commission and concede the nationalization of the coal industry. The Government had never, he said, committed themselves blindfold to whatever the Commission might recommend, and they had definitely decided that they could not undertake the State management of the mines. In the great coal dispute of the autumn of 1020, he in- sisted that there must be guarantees as to output before there could be an advance of wages, and that wages and output must advance together. He treated the refusal of Irish railwaymen in that year to carry munitions of war, which was backed in a half- hearted way by the English railwaymen, as a challenge to the whole constitution of the country and was prepared to close the Irish railways rather than submit.
A speech which he delivered at the City Temple on Sept. 17 1919 shows his general views of reconstruction. He appealed for brotherhood between nations and brotherhood between classes. He sketched in broad outline the fundamental changes which he wished to see in the political, soc ; al and industrial conditions of the United Kingdom. Slum? would have to go, and he hoped that the great armaments would disappear, as also the wretched mis- understandings between Ireland and the rest o'f the United Kingdom. He looked forward to seeing waste in every shape and form disappear. But these changes could only be effected by patient work, in the spirit of comradeship of classes, a passion- ate desire to see justice done to all classes. He pleaded not only
for the League of Nations, but for fair play between employers and employed. If workmen merely considered how much they could extort from employers at the cost, perhaps, of the commun- ity, or if employers only asked at how low a price they could buy off labour, the result would be disastrous. In this spirit, while prices were high and the fictitious boom in trade born of war was still in existence, he started the Ministry of Health and the Min- istry of Transport on large lines, encouraged Dr. Addison in a great housing scheme, for the reason that, as he said, adequate housing would make happy homes, which were the surest guar- antee against agitation and unrest; he promoted legislation guaranteeing a minimum price of wheat and security of tenure to the farmer, and a minimum wage and better hours to the labourer; and he encouraged Mr. Austen Chamberlain to con- tinue to lay the same, or greater, burdens on the taxpayer in peace, as that patriotic citizen had borne in patience during war.
Then in the late autumn of 1920 there came without warning a sharp depression in trade, and prices suddenly fell. This at once rendered acute the question of expenditure about which there had been many sporadic protests already. Mr. Lloyd George pointed out that the depression was universal, that it was desirable to remove Government control from trade as soon as possible, and that public and private economy were necessary on the strictest lines. He had already addressed a strong letter to the spending departments, but with little result; and in the previous year he had pointed to armaments as the only item on which considerable reductions could be made. But the public thought that there were other possibilities of reduction, espe- cially in the grandiose schemes of Mr. Fisher, Dr. Addison and Sir Eric Geddes, the Ministers of Education, Health and Trans- port. This opinion was forcibly brought home to Mr. Lloyd George in the spring of 1921 by the rapid growth of an " Anti- Waste " party, unaffiliated to any of the historical connexions, which defeated Government candidates in by-election after by- election; and by the formation of a growing " cave," in the ministerial ranks, of members who announced that they held themselves free to vote against the Government on questions of expenditure. Reluctant as Mr. Lloyd George, always a social reformer rather than an economist, was to abandon his cherished policy, he recognized that it was necessary to bow to public opin- ion. The greater part of Mr. Fisher's scheme was postponed; Sir Eric Geddes reduced the dimensions of his railway bill; Dr. Addison's proposals were so mutilated that he resigned; the agricultural policy was reversed; the abandonment of control of mines was advanced by four months in order to save the sub- sidy, and incidentally the greatest strike of recent times was precipitated. But the movement for a severe reduction of ex- penditure still gathered force.
There was nothing nearer to Mr. Lloyd George's heart than to effect an Irish settlement, and he carried through Parliament in 1919-20 a Home Rule bill creating two self-governing Par- liaments, one at Dublin and one at Belfast, with a Federal Coun- cil as a link between them making for the unity of Ireland. He explained to Parliament that the measure rested on three basic facts: (i) three-fourths of the Irish people were bitterly hos- tile and rebels at heart; (2) N.E. Ireland was alien in race sympathy and tradition from the rest; (3) severance of the United Kingdom and Ireland would be fatal to both. The first of these facts was abundantly illustrated in 1919-21. The Sinn Feiners of the south kept up a ruthless campaign of assassination against soldiers, police and well-affected civilians, sparing nei- ther age nor sex. Mr. Lloyd George reenforced both soldiers and police, and backed them up strongly, even palliating unauthor- ized and severe reprisals which newly recruited police without sufficient discipline committed during several weeks. But though he assured Parliament and the public, at intervals, that he had murder by the throat, the campaign was still continued; and Sinn Fein held such a control of southern Ireland that it captured in 1921 without contests the whole of the seats for the southern Parliament except those allotted to Trinity College, and then its members refused to come and take the oath. But the northern Parliament, where the Unionists had a large majority, was
