Reverting to the miners' strike, the Prime Minister repudiated Mr.
Clynes's dangerous argument that it would have cost the nation less to give the miners' leaders all that they asked for, and that therefore it was wrong to resist them. Every union might then have made similar demands for State subsidies. He reminded Mr. Clynes that the professional classes and the middle classes had suffered in silence far greater reductions in their standard of living than the miners were asked to accept. While the parties to the dispute were in an obstinate frame of mind, it was useless for the Government to suggest a renewal of the negotiations. He commended the good work of the miners in the war, but said that as strikers they were a stubborn lot. Russia had proved that " you cannot dodge realities by formulas," and that if wealth was not created by the co-operation of em- ployers and employed industry would cease.
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