Thereupon, the committee agreed that Clemenceau should go with them to speak to a mass meeting of the miners. It was a doubtful venture, but Clemenceau went. In the course of his speech he reassured the men upon the attitude of the Government as represented by himself. He told them plainly: "You are entitled to strike. You will be protected by the law in doing all which the law permits. Your rights are equal to the rights of President or Ministers. But the rights of others must not be attacked. The mines must not be destroyed. For the first time, you will see no soldiers in the street during the strike. True, soldiers have been placed in the mines, but solely to protect them, not in any way to injure you. On the other hand, you must not resort to violence yourselves. The strike can be carried on peacefully and without interference. Respect the mines upon which you depend for your livelihood." This was quite plain, and Clemenceau adhered to his own programme as he had formulated it. But the difficulty was apparent from the first, and it is a difficulty which must always recur when a great strike is organised. If the State claims the right to intervene, in order to protect the laws and liberties of those who wish to work for the employers, in spite of the strike and the decisions of the strikers, antagonism to such action is practically certain beforehand. For, in this case, as the strikers say, the State is using the forces of the military and the police in order to protect "blacklegs" who, by offering their labour to the employers at such a time of acute class war, act in the interests of the coal-owners and against the mass of the workers. Socialists argue that the strikers are sound in their contention, and that by assuring to non-strikers the right to work the Government practically nullifies the right to strike. When, therefore, in this typical Courrières case, the strikers as a whole remained out, notwithstanding certain insufficient offers by the coal-owners, and a minority of non-strikers claimed the help of the law, with support of the State army, to weaken by their surrender the position of the majority of their fellow-workers in the same industry, then the ethics of the dispute between sections of the miners could not be so easily determined as M. Clemenceau from his individualist training assumed.