Deeds of a Great Railway / A record of the enterprise and achievements of the London and North-Western Railway company during the Great War

by G. R. S. Darroch

It is not uninteresting to note the second-in-command, or, as some believe him to have been, the actual commander-in-chief, of the great German fighting machine paying a tribute to the energy of the foe, the one foe hated and feared of all others by the entire German people, namely England; and this energy was at the time in question very properly brought to the notice of a representative gathering of Colonial, American, and English journalists by Mr. Winston Churchill, who, speaking on behalf of the Ministry of Munitions (cp. the Times, March 27th, 1918), told these gentlemen of the Press that they must "recognise that the strength of the British armies rests not only on the superb courage of the soldiers, but on the gigantic output which their countrymen at home are contributing from week to week, and from hour to hour, after all these years of strain, never at such a pitch of efficiency and energy as at the present time."

Few people there are, probably, who have ever realised what "the years of strain" have meant to the workers in mine, factory, and shipyard; it is in fact the exception rather than the rule to find in public utterances reference to the drudgery, the monotony, involved in the manufacture, frequently of a repetition nature, hour after hour, week after week, month after month, of all those countless mechanical contrivances of which the diverse component parts are essential to the whole. The tendency has been rather to decry these people as shirkers, money-grubbers, worthy only to be labelled with epithets unsavoury to the palate. In every branch of a profession or trade, in every walk in life, there are of course bound to be exceptions, but in common fairness to those innumerable and genuine "indispensables" who perforce remained at home, let us not forget that to the many of these who would gladly have gone was denied the experience, the excitement, the novelty, attaching to the open-air life of movement incidental to an overseas campaign.

Obviously enough, closely allied to, in fact interwoven with, production is the question of cost, a question which in war as in peace could not fail to afford a loophole for difficulties and disputes, either of a minor character, or aggravated perhaps by the continued years of strain and monotony.

Mr. Churchill, however, was undoubtedly on the right tack when he went on to insist that we should "not assume that because from time to time they (the workmen) put forth their sectional aims, these aims were the only things they care about. They have a sort of feeling," he declared, "that they have to push forward their class interests, and I am not blaming them for it, but in the main our strength rests upon their loyal, resolute support, and we can count on that."

As a single instance of the reliance which could be placed in the work-people's resolute support, we have only to note the loyal adherence by the men in Crewe Works, which they maintained to the bitter end, to a resolution which they passed themselves, to the effect that "We, the working men of Crewe, will do all that is humanly possible to increase the output of munitions, and stand by our comrades in the trenches"; and this resolution was the outcome of a series of meetings organised and held in the summer of 1915, in the various shops within the Works, when Mr. Cooke, having emphasised the paramount importance of keeping up the great railways, "which have to deal with the transport of soldiers and munitions, that keep together the life of the country," went on to remind his hearers that "it is to those who produce the material for the making and repairing of locomotives who have this all-important matter in their hands."

"We, the Working Men of Crewe, will do all that is Humanly Possible to Increase the Output of Munitions, and Stand by our Comrades in the Trenches."

[To face p. 180.

Appropriately enough, Mr. Craig, M.P. for the constituency, having already wired the terms of the resolution to Mr. Lloyd George, was able on behalf of the latter to "thank you, the men of Crewe Works, for the splendid efforts you have put forward in the past;" adding, that he had peculiar satisfaction in so doing, for "never either in the House of Commons or out of it have I heard a word of reproach levelled against the men of Crewe. Their patriotism has never been impeached."