The Dawn of a New Constructive Era 33 



working men began to strike all over England. The working 

 men said the capitalists were making big war profits and yet 

 their wages had not been increased, and they struck ; and Lloyd 

 George exhorted them and begged them to return to their work 

 from patriotic motives, and they said, "We are perfectly willing 

 to work, but we have to have a square deal ; if our masters make 

 huge war profits, then our wages must go up." They would not 

 budge an inch. Finally, the workingmen sent word to the 

 Prime Minister and said: "We have a proposition; our masters 

 say we are disloyal, we are slackers and shirkers ; we will find 

 out who is the slacker and the shirker ; now we will not only 

 work for low wages, but for no wages at all, on one condition — 

 that the capitalists put their plants and coal mines and rail- 

 roads at the disposition of the Government as we offer to do 

 our labor, without remuneration." Then the Government called 

 together the capitalists and the workingmen and the Govern- 

 ment officials and had a conference ; and after a day or two they 

 worked out a plan which guaranteed to capitalists a reasonable 

 profit on their investment and no more, and to workingmen a 

 reasonable wage that would take care of them, even with the 

 prices of food as high as they were, and no more ; and on this 

 basis they harnessed all the industrial, agricultural and financial 

 strength of England in the great war, and since that day you 

 have seen England leaping forward like a powerful automobile 

 that has been thrown into high — the change was magical, because 

 from that moment every man, woman and child in Great Britain 

 was working with one purpose only — to advance the cause of 

 their common country. They found that no nation is prepared 

 which does not take justice out of the Bible and out of the 

 skies and out of the hearts of jurists and judges and prophets 

 and bring it down to earth and write it into the laws and victory or 

 institutions of men. (Applause.) And after they had done all Defeat De- 

 that, they found there was still something lacking. They found pends on 

 what Germany had found — and France, and Italy, and even Rus- ^ood Supplies 

 sia — that after all, an army travels on its belly; that this is a 

 war not between armies but between nations and combinations 

 of nations, and every man, woman and child is doing his bit 

 to help his country. With thirty million people slowly starv- 

 ing in Germany, and every other country in Europe being put 

 on war rations, they found that the war is going to be determined 

 not b}' the nation with the greatest number of men in the 



