But it will be asked what is to happen when the employers and Unions concerned in our great national industries decline to come together. In that event, the Government, through the Ministry of Labour, must, as the latter has so frequently done with tact and efficiency, endeavour to bring the two sides to a conference. That can usually be done. The Ministry has power under the Industrial Courts Act, 1919, to appoint a Court of Inquiry, but this power in practice is of little use unless both sides agree. Public opinion, however, can always be relied on strongly to resent employers and unions standing at arm’s length; but before it can, or will, operate, a definite open effort must be made to put them into touch with one another. Negotiations once instituted may culminate in an agreement, or end in a rupture, so that a strike or lock-out appears inevitable. Then there is generally but one sound course for the Government to pursue: at once to refer the dispute through the appropriate Government Department to the Industrial Court, and obtain its impartial and experienced decision upon the issue. Whether either or both parties will submit to the arbitrament of the Court is purely voluntary—we have not compulsory industrial arbitration in this country. It has failed in Canada and Australia; it failed here disastrously during the war. If men are to be compelled to accept an award, employers must be compelled, if the Court so decide, to carry on their works at a loss. But the public has no patience with any party to a wages dispute who will not agree to the reference of his claim to an independent tribunal, or who, having agreed to the submission, refuses to accept the award. One of the most important present-day functions of such a tribunal is to analyse the claim and see to what extent the claim is a genuine industrial demand, or part of the revolutionary programme of extremists for squeezing all private profit out of industry so as to force “nationalization and democratic control” or some other favourite socialistic scheme. The one fatal course is for the Cabinet to attempt itself to handle industrial disputes.