7 JUNE 1919, Page 1

NEWS OF THE WEEK.

AT the great meeting of theMetropolitan Police inHyde Park last Sunday the Police Union collapsed. Once more British common-sense triumphed—it triumphed, as it often does, in spite of alarming signs which made pessimists give rein to their forebodings. For example, the ballot of the men had been heavily in favour of a strike. The extremist leaders of the movement appeared on the platform with these fortifying figures in their pockets, and so far as statistical support went, they had every right to go ahead with a stout heart to turn the police into a Soviet agency. But all the time the leaders knew that the majority of the policemen, for all their votes, recognized that the police cannot be managed on ordinary industrial linen ; that the offer of the Government, though late, was a good one in itself ; and that to persist in the rebellious movement was to ask for disaster to every individual concerned in it.