Mr. Lloyd George on Thursday week delivered some very plain-
spoken and trenchant remarks to a deputation from the Executive Committee of the Miners' Federation, which had placed before him figures showing a majority of 29,570, on a poll of 471,874, against the taking of fifty thousand men from the mines for military service. /This vote represented the views, not of the majority of miners in the country, but only of those who voted ; but the lamentable fact remains that such an issue as the maintenance of our strength in the field should be put to the vote of any section of the community. It is intolerable that the Prime Minister, shouldering so many burdens and bearing so heavy a strain, should have to watch, " with great interest and a great measure of anxiety," half-a- million miners voting whether they will or will not obey the Govern- ment. That is the real issue, and Mr. Lloyd George set it forth plainly and without temper. If exemption is claimed, and if privileges are established for two of the greatest trades in the kingdom, a third trade will come along and claim the right to ballot on exemption. " This would mean anarchy : it is not government . . . this policy of sectional independence would damn democracy from beginning to end." Russia, the Prime Minister reminded his audience, has been destroyed by internal schism. He does not believe that the Germans will be permitted to reach Calais because the Miners' Federation are not prepared to fight. We hope that his belief in the miners will be justified.
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