Respect for individual liberty was carried to such a point in Great Britain that organizations against recruiting were tolerated in England and Ireland, and strikes, which not only inflicted heavy pecuniary losses on the nation but actually stopped its supplies of munitions and brought it within sight of discomfiture, were treated with soft words and immediate concessions. One cannot read even Mr. Lloyd George's summary narrative of the preposterous doings of British slackers without wondering whether salvation is still possible. These men not only refused to work their best for the community, but forbade their comrades to work well. At Enfield, we are told, a man was obliged by trade union regulations so to regulate his work that he did not earn more than 1_s._ an hour, though he could easily have earned 2_s._ 6_d._[118] Another man was doing two and a half days' work in two days, and when he refused to carry out the behest of the Ironfounders' Board to waste the other half day he was fined L1.[119] A consequence of this anti-national attitude was that "we had to wait for weeks in Birmingham with machinery lying idle, with our men without rifles, with our men with a most inadequate supply of machine guns to attack the enemy and defend themselves."[120] Every one will re-echo the Minister's comment on the outlook, if this attitude is persisted in--"we are making straight for disaster." [118] Mr. Lloyd George's speech at Bristol. Cf. _Daily Telegraph_, September 10, 1915. [119] _Ibid._ [120] _Ibid._ Compare this state of things with that which rules in Germany. It is a British Minister who describes it: "If you want to realize what organized labour in this war means, read the story of the last twelve months. By the end of September the German armies were checked. They sustained an overwhelming defeat in France, Russia was advancing against them towards the Carpathians, and I believe in East Prussia. That is not the case to-day. Why? The German workmen came in; organized labour in Germany prepared to take the field. They worked and worked quietly, persistently, continuously, without stint or strife, without restriction for months and months, through the autumn, through the winter, through the spring. Then came that avalanche of shot and shell which broke the great Russian armies and drove them back. That was the victory of the German workmen."[121] [121] Mr. Lloyd George's speech at Bristol. Cf. _Daily Telegraph_, September 10, 1915. Great Britain is the classic land of strikes. Strikers are sacred among us. Industrial compulsion is rank heresy.