NEWS OF THE WEEK
THE unexpected general strike has had an unexpec- tingly swift ending and the nation is filled with re- joicing. We have had a lesson and we must profit by it. If we do, all classes may be the gainers in the long run, in spite of ten days of catastrophe and loss. The Trades Union Congress has learned, what it ought to have known, that the nation will always refuse to be dictated to by an extra- Parliamentary usurping body. The nation, for its part, has learned that the trade unions as a whole, even when acting under the most unwise direction that it is possible to conceive, do not turn into frenzied and wrecking revolutionaries. They acted illegally under orders, but they acted in loyalty to their comrades in the mines. The General Council of the T.U.C. must be compli- mented on having had the moral courage to redeem a great mistake. Finally, the Government is to be con- gratulated on being justified in its course of requiring the T.U.C. to give way before the coal negotiations could be renewed. There must now be an end to recrimination. The duty of the Unionist Party is to make industrial reconstruction, not only in the mines but elsewhere, an urgent part of its policy. The leeway can be made up— and more than made up—if we all go forward in a common effort and with a''common impulse. It is a great thing to be relieved of the haunting spectre of a general strike which, so far as one can see ahead, is not likely to happen again. As a policy it is not only beaten, but discredited. •
