That this outspoken tribute contained nothing from which could possibly be construed anything in the nature of what is commonly known as "gush" is easily apparent from the fact that Mr. Craig had only just previously appealed to the men to "allow nothing to interfere with the production of munitions of war. You are asked," he said to them point-blank, "to relax for the time being all trades union rules and regulations, and to compete with one another in order to produce the largest possible amount of munitions."
With the exception, then, of an insignificantly small minority of juvenile and inexperienced would-be firebrands, who in nine cases out of ten could not boast of ever having ventured beyond their native shores, if indeed beyond reach of their mothers' apron-strings, the attitude of the men of Crewe was, throughout the protracted struggle, loyal to the core, and that this was so must ever redound to their undying credit.
Let us compare for a moment the condition of things prevailing at the time in Germany, for although "other countries possessed an army, in Prussia," as we know, "the army possessed the country," and probably because of this inflexible régime, possibly in spite of it, everything was not exactly "couleur de rose." In order to sustain the rearward services of this ruthless "juggernaut," Ludendorff "went nap" for universal conscription, industrial as well as military, for all persons between the ages of fifteen and sixty. Another point he was always striving to enforce was the raising of the pay of the fighting man, and a corresponding reduction in the pay of the workman. "The enthusiasm of the moment passes," so Ludendorff argues (cp. page 331, Vol. I.), "it must be replaced by discipline and understanding." But the law which the German Government resolved to introduce in November, 1916, for conscripting auxiliary labour was in his opinion, (cp. pages 332, 333, Vol. I.) "neither fish nor fowl. We wanted something wholesale. The bill departed, too, from the principle of universal liability to service, and gave no security that the labour power obtained would be so employed as to produce the maximum results. It was not merely insufficient, but positively harmful in operation. It had a bad effect on the soldiers;" for "troops withdrawn from the heavy fighting at the Front saw auxiliary workers and women workers working in peace and safety for wages far higher than their own pay. This was bound to embitter the men who had to risk their lives day by day, and to endure the greatest hardships, and of necessity increased their dissatisfaction with their pay." In the circumstances, can anyone marvel that:—
"Reason frowns on war's unequal game,
Where thousands fall to raise a single name"?
The war-profiteer, too, was "a repulsive phenomenon," who (cp. page 342, Vol. I.) with the "corruption of his influence has done us incalculable harm."
That our own Government of the day adopted and pursued a policy, if not exactly of killing, at least of spoiling, the goose that laid the golden egg—a policy, moreover, which could not fail, here as in Germany, to have the effect of discrediting the fighting man in the eyes of his mate privileged to remain at home—was certainly no fault of the railway companies or of their own employés; in fact one branch at least of the railway service, the staff of which had no particular reason to bless the Government, or indeed the war at all, was the locomotive accountants' department at Crewe; for those who were employed in this particular department, that is to say those of them who were left at home—and the fact should never be overlooked that the percentage of clerks who joined the Forces was not surpassed by that of any other grade of employés on the railways—were involved in the few years of the war in hard work, changes, and readjustments of one kind and another, such as ordinarily would not have been their lot to experience, in the whole course of a lifetime.
It is true that at the commencement of the war efforts were undoubtedly made to curtail office work as far as possible, the Board of Trade assisting in this direction by suspending Statistical Return 12 of the Railway Companies' Accounts and Returns Act. Statistics, too, relating to shunting, extraction of mileage in districts for rating purposes, and certain sub-divisions of mileage, were discontinued.
Then again, the Government having guaranteed the nett receipts of the railways, although charges affecting capital and stock still operated, the Railway Executive Committee decided to put in abeyance the practice of rendering accounts as between one railway company and another, for work or services rendered on revenue account, whether on personal account or at joint stations, junctions, etc.
As against all this, however, obligations commenced, increased, and multiplied in other and different directions. At the very outset of the war, for example, in order to separate the Government control period from the pre-control period, extensive stock-taking was necessary, as well as a complete making-up of accounts as from midnight August 4th, 1914.