Labour Party in England regarded this offer as eminently reasonable, and urged the Foreign Secretary to accept it. The Government, however, considered the Chinese reply thoroughly unsatisfactory, and began to cast about for means of applying the sanctions of which it had spoken. It found most of the other Powers concerned, especially the United States, exceedingly unwilling to join it in such a step, and was thus faced with the unpleasant alternative of acting alone or allowing its threat to remain a brutum fulmen. From this embarrassing situation it was rescued by the development of events in China itself. A few days after the despatch of Mr. Chen's Note the quarrel between the Communist and the Nationalist sections within the Kuomintang Party came to a head. General Chiang Kai-shek, as head of the Nationalist section, began to put down Communism with an iron hand in the districts under his control, and in Nanking he visited with condign punishment the perpetrators of the anti-foreign outrages of March, dealing with them, as Sir A. Chamberlain subsequently put it, "with a severity and effectiveness of which no foreign Power was capable.' On this head, therefore, as the Foreign Secretary informed Parliament on May 9, Britain could consider her demands satisfied. There remained the question of reparation for damage done. In regard to this, he said that whatever Government finally emerged from the confusion then prevailing in China would be held responsible for outrages on British subjects resulting from the civil war, and compensation and reparation would be demanded of it by the British Government. The events at Nanking, he added, would make no difference to the agreement about Hankow. They had ample justification for reoccupying the Concession there and regarding the Agreement as cancelled; but they refrained from doing so in order to show once more their friendship for China.

For the first time for many months the Secretary for Foreign Affairs, on May 2, made a statement on European affairs other than Russian. The occasion was a question asked in the House of Commons on the connexion of England with the Treaty of Tirana concluded in the previous November between Italy and Yugoslavia, which had subsequently become a source of serious friction between Italy and France. It had recently been asserted in the French Press that Britain had abetted Italy in the conclusion of the Treaty, and public opinion in England was uneasy over the matter. Sir A. Chamberlain set at rest the fears that British relations with France had been in any way compromised. He denied that the British Government had had anything to do either with the inception, negotiation, or terms of the Treaty. Britain was not directly concerned in the tension which had arisen between Italy and Yugoslavia as a result of the Treaty, but being on friendly terms with both Powers, it had done its best to allay suspicion and to promote direct conversations between them. The

Government had no other interest in the question than the preservation of peace, and it had no intention of taking sides for or against either party.

In the House of Commons about this time attention was called to certain statements made by Mr. Mellon, Secretary of the United States Treasury, in a letter to the President of Princeton University, belittling the sacrifice which England was making in the payment of the American war debt. The Chancellor of the Exchequer, in answer to questions, forthwith denied the correctness of Mr. Mellon's statements. Considering, however, that they required a more formal and complete refutation, the Government instructed the British Ambassador at Washington, on May 2, to hand to the United States Government a Note on the subject, the text of which was issued by the Foreign Office to the Press a couple of days later. The chief object of the Note was to show by figures and quotations that Mr. Mellon had quite underestimated the burden which the British taxpayer was bearing, and would continue to bear, in respect of war debt repayments, in spite of the increased amounts which Britain might expect to receive from Germany in the way of reparations and from other countries in payment of war debts. The Note concluded by stating that the Government viewed with great misgiving the divergence of opinion and the estrangement of sentiment which was growing up in regard to these war obligations. It regretted that there should have been issued under the authority of the Secretary of the United States Treasury a series of statements which seemed to it to misrepresent the facts, and trusted that the United States Government would take steps to remove the unfortunate impression which had been created.

The discussion of the Trade Union Bill in the House of Commons opened on May 2-just a twelvemonth after the commencement of the general strike of which it was the rebound. Public interest in the Bill was shown by the crowded attendance on the floor and in the galleries of the House, and the Government marked its sense of the importance and controversial character of the measure by setting aside practically a whole week for the debate on the second reading. The mover was the AttorneyGeneral, Sir Douglas Hogg, who had been chiefly responsible for drafting the Bill. In a speech of over two hours' duration, which was subjected to constant interruption from the Labour benches -the Speaker had finally to ask one member to leave the Househe presented the case for the Bill in its general outline with great persuasiveness. He summarised the general effect of the Bill in four propositions: first, that a general strike was illegal, and no man should be penalised for refusing to take part in it; secondly, that intimidation was illegal, and no man should be coerced by threats to abstain from work; thirdly, that no man should be compelled to subscribe to any political party unless he so desired;

fourthly, that anyone entering the established Civil Service must give his undivided allegiance to the State. Was there, he asked, any member of the House who was prepared to assert that any one of these propositions was wrong? Because, if not, the Government was surely justified in claiming that the Bill was in effect a Bill to vindicate the authority of the State and to protect the liberties of the citizens. Dealing with the propositions in detail, he asserted that a general strike differed not in degree but in character from an industrial or a genuine strike, in the fact that it was a blow not struck by one combatant against another, but directed, whether in intention or not, at the vitals of the whole community. He quoted the language used by several of the more moderate Labour leaders in condemnation of the whole idea of the general strike, and said that if they represented the views of the whole Socialist Party, then, indeed, it might be held that there was no necessity for the first clause of the Bill. But unfortunately there were other influential members of the party who used quite different language-for instance, the President of the Trade Union Congress, who had declared his opinion that general strikes of a more intense and formidable character were inevitable. In face of that challenge, it was the bounden duty of a Government which believed a general strike to be a wicked crime against the State, to make it clear beyond the shadow of a doubt that the general strike was illegal, and that any man who took part in it committed a crime against the community at large. This was the purpose of the first clause of the Bill. The speaker admitted that, logically, the clause ought to include a general lock-out also. He justified the omission on two grounds-one, that there was little likelihood of the general lock-out being used in the same way as a general strike-to coerce the Government; the other, that if such a thing was attempted, the Government, acting under the Emergency Powers Act, could simply take possession of the works and run them until the employers came to reason. Dealing with the other clauses of the Bill, the Attorney-General maintained that intimidation would be made illegal by it, but not picketing; that the clause relating to the political levy was necessary to prevent abuses within the trade unions; and that while the regulations regarding the Civil Service could have been made by the Government without the Bill, they thought it better to obtain the approval of Parliament for such steps.

The Attorney-General's defence of the Bill made little impression on the Opposition. Mr. Clynes, in moving its rejection, stigmatised it as a calculated and deliberate act of class hostility. The main objection of the Labour Party to the first clause of the Bill was that it would erect a great, if not insuperable, barrier of doubt in the minds of trade union leaders and executives as to when it was legal for them to take any action.

Sir H. Slesser, looking at the Bill from a legal standpoint, said

that it went far beyond the general strike, and would make it unsafe for men to take part in any sympathetic strike whatever. In regard to intimidation also, the Government had veiled its intentions in evasive and doubtful language. On the other hand, Captain MacMillan, one of the most prominent of the "new Conservatives," gave the Bill his blessing in principle, though he thought it should be altered in details, and Mr. Spencer, the miners' representative who had been recently expelled from the Labour Party, also supported it cordially.

Continuing his speech on the second day, Mr. Spencer drew a powerful picture from his own experience of the intimidation which went on inside the trade unions, to the no small discomfiture of "his late friends," as he called the Labour members, and the huge delight of the Conservatives, who gave him an ovation at the conclusion of his speech. He was followed by Mr. Henderson, who pointed out that the Bill struck at the long-established rights of trade unions, and, in fact, represented such an invasion of their rights as had not been attempted since the repeal of the Combination Laws. Sir L. Worthington-Evans, who rose to answer certain questions raised in the debate, was, like Sir D. Hogg on the previous day, subjected to a good deal of interruption from the Labour benches, which once or twice rose to tumult.

The chief speeches on the third day were delivered by Sir John Simon and the Prime Minister. The former, as might have been expected from his utterances on the general strike, took up a more detached attitude than the great majority of the speakers, and found something to support and something to condemn in the views of both sides. He agreed that the four objects of the Bill, as set forth by the Attorney-General, were highly commendable, and he put it to the Labour members that if the Bill really fulfilled these objects, they would find it difficult to go to the country with a proposal to repeal it. But there was much to take objection to in the method and language used by the Government to attain its ends. He would have wished that the Labour Party would frankly recognise the illegality of the general strike; but since, on the whole, it did not, he would have liked to see the Government introduce a short one-clause Bill declaring that any combination, whether of employers or employed, to coerce the Government or Parliament by a simultaneous refusal to continue employment or work was an unlawful conspiracy. Since, however, the Government had not thought fit to proceed in this way, he saw nothing for it but that they should do their best to amend the Bill in such a way as to make it fulfil the declarations laid down by the Attorney-General. Some interjections with which this remark was greeted drew from him the retort that there were Labour members who even yet did not understand the difference between intimidation and peaceful persuasion.

The Prime Minister gave what was in effect an explanation of

his own volte-face in the matter of trade union legislation. He had, he said, long held that the Act of 1906 concerning trade unions had opened the way to grave abuses which ought to be corrected by legislation. In 1925, however, when Mr. Macquisten introduced a Bill to suppress the political levy, he had induced him to withdraw it, as he did not wish the Conservative Party to fire the first shot in the struggle with the trade unions. Three months later he advised the Government to avert a general strike by giving a subsidy to the coal-mining industry, because he had sufficient faith in the democratic instincts of the people to believe that if they had some months to consider the question they would refrain from bringing the country face to face with a general strike. That faith had not been justified; the extremists had gained control, and the general strike weapon had been brought into operation. The mandate for the Bill was thus to be found in the events of the past year. He had been pressed to introduce such a Bill during the strike and immediately afterwards, but he had refrained, because a Bill introduced at such a time would have been vindictive. The present Bill was intended to lay down and pass into law the four propositions mentioned by the AttorneyGeneral, and he invited the House to co-operate in making it as effective as possible for that purpose.

Mr. Baldwin's speech was the occasion for renewed disorderly scenes in the House. Speaking of the changes which had taken place in the character of the trade unions since 1906, he remarked that in some of them the power was gradually passing into the hands of what was known as the Minority Movement. He was asked by a Labour member to mention an instance, and in answer said that he would not quote names, neither would he withdraw. This was the signal for an uproar on the Labour benches, as a sequel to which one member was "named " by the Deputy Speaker, and suspended from the House, by 321 votes to 88. Mr. Baldwin, in reply to further questions, mentioned the Miners' Federation as a union which, in his opinion, had come under the influence of the Minority Movement. This was at once denied by a miners' member, but the Premier held to his opinion.

The last day produced the most effective speech of the whole debate on the Labour side from Mr. Snowden, who trenchantly exposed the Government pretence that the first clause of the Bill was necessary to protect the community against the menace of a general strike. In his opinion, the true argument against a general strike was not that it was morally wrong, but that it was foolish and ineffective. There was nothing wrong in trying to coerce the Government-Governments were made to be coerced. But a general strike could only be effective if it had the support of the mass of the population. Further, they would not stop a general strike by declaring it illegal; if the workers were determined to have it, they would care neither for Acts of Parliament nor for