The same thing happened in another factory. Now, in the period of war this is really intolerable. ["Hear, hear!">[ We cannot do with it. We cannot afford it, I say again. There may be reasons, there might be very good reasons, that a policy of that sort should be adopted in the period of peace. I am expressing no opinions about that. I am simply stating the case of this particular emergency, and I am sure that the only thing in this emergency is that everybody should put forward all his strength in order to help the country through. [Cheers.]
Therefore, I do hope that whatever regulation, whatever practice, whatever custom there may be in existence at the present moment which interferes in the slightest degree in the increase of war material, will be suspended during the period of war.
We have given our undertaking as a Government, and that undertaking has been inherited by a new Government. That is that those safeguards which have been established by trade-union action prior to the war will be restored exactly to the position they were when the war is over, in so far as the action of the Government is concerned. We can only ask for a suspension of these regulations during the period of the war, then afterward the same process of discussion will go on between capital and labor as has gone on, I have no doubt, during the last fifty or one hundred years.
Those are two or three of the things which I wanted to put. The lives of our men at the front depend upon the amount of war material we are able to equip them with, success depends upon it, the lives of men depend upon it. Everybody ought to do his best. There is no room for slackers. ["Hear, hear!">[ I don't want to get rid of the slackers, I only want to get rid of their slackness—[laughter and cheers]—and we really must.
In this war every country is demanding as a matter of right—not as a matter of appeal—as a matter of right from every one of the citizens, that he should do his best—[cheers]—and that is one of the problems with which we have to deal in this country. It ought to be established as a duty, as one of the essential duties of citizenship, that every man should put his whole strength into helping the country through. [Cheers.] And I don't believe any section of the community would object to it, if it were made a legal right and duty expected of every one. [Cheers.]
I don't know that I have anything further that I want specially to say to you, because I want to get to business as quickly as possible. Sir Frederick Donaldson of Woolwich Arsenal and Sir Percy Girouard are here to answer any question you may put to them on the business of the meeting. They can inform you on the technical side in a way that I can't pretend to. I can only ask you to help us. I know that appeal to you won't be in vain.
We are engaged in the greatest struggle this country has ever been precipitated into. It is no fault of ours. ["Hear, hear!">[ We sought peace, we asked for peace, we avoided all the paths that led to war, but we should have forever been dishonored if we had shirked the conflict when it came. [Cheers.]
Harried into it, we are there to champion the deepest, the highest, the greatest interest ever committed to the charge of any nation. Let us equip ourselves in such a way that Great Britain through the war will be still great, and when the war is over it will be a Greater Britain than ever. [Cheers.]
