The British Gazette of last Saturday published messages by Lord
Oxford and Lord Grey of Fallodon. Lord Oxford pointed out that there could be no greater mis- understanding than to suppose that the resistance of the people to the general strike implied any hostility to the right of combination in industry. A general strike, as he said, is directly aimed at the whole community, and those who suffer least from it are capitalists. The real victims are the men and women who have to labour hard for their livelihood and that of their children. The nation would have lost all self-respect, he added, if it allowed any section to replace free Government with a dictatorship. " We desire at the earliest possible moment the resump- tion of negotiations, but the anti-soo;,3ial weapon must first be sheathed." Lord Grey of Fallodon said that the issue now was not what the wages of the miners should be, but whether democratic Parliamentary Government should be overthrown—that kind of Government by which liberty had been won and by which alone it could be maintained. The misfortune of the general strike, he went on to say, was three-fold. " It has raised an issue in which the interest of the miners is lost to sight ; it has destroyed the good will without which industries cannot recover ; and it is impoverishing everybody." Finally Lord Grey said that he would not go into a discussion as to who was to blame for breaking off negotiations. Recriminations would be useless, as we were all concerned entirely with the facts of the present and the future. " End the strike and get back to negotiations."
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