Whatever is done has got to be done with promptitude. That involves our trusting to the integrity, to the loyalty, to the patriotism of the business men to do their best for us in these localities, and do it on fair terms. That is the first thing I have got to say to the business men of the community. I want you to regard this as your business as well as ours. This is not a Government entering into negotiations with you. You are the Government, you have got an interest in this concern, it is your concern, just as much as it is ours, and I want you to help us.

This is a business for all of us, and we want every business man in the community to give his very best to help the old country through in the great emergency and crisis. [Cheers.] That means that you will, as soon as you possibly can, get your committee of management, and, through that committee of management, organize your district for the purpose of producing such material of war, or such other component parts of any particular material of war, you can help us to produce.

I would make the same appeal to labor. I want them also to feel that this is their business. Should Germany win, God help labor! ["Hear, hear!">[ It will come out of it worst of all. The victory of Germany will be the victory of the worst form of autocracy that this world has seen for many a century. There is no section of the community has anything like the interest in the overthrow of this military caste which labor has—["Hear, hear!">[—and the more they realize that, difficulties will vanish, obstacles will go, and bickerings and slackness. We have to get to work as one man to help to win a triumph for democratic free government against the autocratic systems of Germany and Austria. [Cheers.]

Now, I should like to say one or two words beyond what I said yesterday on this particular aspect of the business. I have had the privilege, both yesterday and today, of meeting some of the leading representatives of labor in Manchester and Liverpool. And let me say this: As far as the official representatives of organized labor are concerned, we have had nothing but help. The difficulty has been when you get beyond.

I am not saying a word about trade-union regulations during a period of peace. I have no doubt they were essential safeguards to the protection of labor against what otherwise might have been a serious interference with their rights and with their prospects. But as I have already pointed out to you, Government regulations have to be suspended during the period of the war because they are inapplicable in a time of urgency. The same thing applies to many trade-union regulations and practices. ["Hear, hear!">[

The first I should like to call attention to are those rules which had been set up for very good reasons to make it difficult for purely unsullied men to claim the position and rights of men who have had a training—that is true in every profession.

I happen, my Lord Mayor, to belong to about the strictest trade union in the world—[laughter]—the most jealous trade union in the world. If any unskilled man—and by an unskilled man we mean a man who has not paid our fees—if any man of that sort, however brainy he was, tried to come in and interfere with our business, well, we would soon settle him. [Laughter.] But if during the period of the war there were any particular use for lawyers—[laughter]—if you find that upon lawyers depended the success of the war, and it requires a good deal of imagination; even my Celtic imagination will hardly attain to the exalted height—[more laughter]—but if that were possible for a moment, do you suppose that even the Incorporated Law Society, the greatest and narrowest of all trade unions, could stand in the way of bringing in outside help in order to enable us to get through our work?

Well, now, the same thing applies here. If all the skilled engineers in this country were turned on to produce what is required, if you brought back from the front every engineer who had been recruited, if you worked them to the utmost limits of human endurance, you have not got enough labor even then to produce all we are going to ask you to produce during the next few months. Therefore, we must appeal to the patriotism of the unions of this country to relax these particular rules, in order to eke out, as it were, the skill, to make it go as far as it possibly can go, in order to enable us to turn out the necessary munitions of war to win a real and a speedy triumph for our country in this great struggle.

Now, the same thing applies to the work of women in the factories. There is a good deal of work now done by men, and men only, in this country which is done in France at the present moment in shell factories by women. Why is that? They have not enough men to go round. The men are working as hard as they can, for as long hours as they possibly can support, but in spite of that they would not turn out a sufficient number of shells and other material of war without doling out a good part of the work to women in those factories. Well, now, if there are any trade-union regulations to prevent the possibility of that being done, I hope during the period of war these will be suspended. ["Hear, hear!">[

Now, I am coming to another thing—and I am here to talk quite frankly—it is very much better to do so. ["Hear, hear!">[ There must be no deliberate slowing down of work. I have had two or three very painful cases put before me. One was from an arsenal upon which we were absolutely dependent for the material of war. There was a very skilled workman there who worked very hard and who earned a good deal of money. He was doing his duty by the State. He was not merely warned that if he repeated that offense he would be driven out, I am not quite sure that he was not actually driven out.