We are in entire agreement with Lord Lansdowne as regards
the Government making absolutely clear their deter- mination to protect the free labourers. No one, of course, suggests that the Government should have used any menaces towards miners, but at the same time they should, we hold, have earlier declared that they would secure the right to work to all who desire to work, and would suppress any inter- ference by the strikers intended to infringe liberty of action and free trade in labour. It is unhappily not possible to say that the whole community felt certain that the Government would give this protection to non-union workers, and that therefore it was not necessary to make any public declaration on the subject. It is to be feared, instead, that a good many of the non-union men believed that the Government would never dare to protect them from mob violence. After the Archbishop of Canterbury had urged that an appeal on behalf of the Christian conscience should be made to all those concerned to bid them realize that the interests of the country were after all supreme, the Chancellor wound up the debate for the Government. He expressed the belief that the nation would come through this trial, as they had come through others, by "the inherent qualities of the race."
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