It is more in regard to industrial disputes concerning wages and conditions of employment that the Government is too prone to intervene. There must always be a Ministry of Labour to keep in close touch with industrial disputes. Such a Ministry, though it should in the first instance leave employers and employed to discuss matters through the conciliation machinery that exists in each particular industry, yet, by discreet and impartial action, can do most valuable work in smoothing over ruptures in negotiations when neither side from motives of dignity or strategy will move. That is a different thing altogether from the Cabinet rushing in. The public will never know the extent to which industrial harmony in this country has been preserved on occasions of stress by the efforts towards conciliation exerted by the Ministry of Labour and its predecessor, the Conciliation Department of the Board of Trade, and sometimes under the greatest difficulties. At times when the Ministry had arranged between employers and Trade Unions a formula for the solution of a wage dispute or the termination of a strike or other industrial controversy, the recalcitrant leaders of some Union, entering into temporary alliance with other turbulent spirits, would speed found in deputation to the Cabinet at 10, Downing Street, and seldom be denied admission. Frequently, other terms would be suggested by the Cabinet for the sake of peace, probably more favourable to the workers than those arranged by the Ministry of Labour. The results were disastrous, the prestige of the Ministry suffered a serious relapse, the repute of the Trade Union leaders who agreed terms with the Ministry was damaged in the eyes of their members almost irretrievably, the rebellious section of the Union was given a resounding advertisement at the expense of industrial constitutional government—no surer way to sow the seeds of disruption and indiscipline in any Union. Protection of the Community