I do not deny, of course, that both a general strike, and others of far less amplitude, inflict grave injury and hardship upon the community. But when trade unions seek for what they regard as justice, one of their most powerful sources of strength is the awakening of the slow and inert public to a sense of the position. Effectively to do this, in a real world, it must inconvenience the public; that awkward giant has no sense of its obligations until it is made uncomfortable. When it is aroused, if, for instance, trains do not run, or coal is not mined, the public begins to have interest in the position, to call for action. Without some alternative which attempts to secure attention for a just result--I know of no such alternative--the infliction of hardship on the community seems to me the sole way, even if an unfortunate way, to the end the trade unions have in view. To limit the right to strike is a form of industrial servitude. It means, ultimately, that the worker must labour on the employer’s terms lest the public be inconvenienced. I can see no justice in such a denial of freedom. Two further points it is worth while to make. It is sometimes agreed that while the state ought not to restrict freedom of association for industrial ends, it is justified in doing so when the strike-weapon is used for some political purpose. This, indeed, was one of the objects of the Baldwin Government in enacting the Trades Disputes Act of 1927. But I know of no formula whereby such a division of purposes can be successfully made. There is no hard and fast line between industrial action and political action. There is no hard and fast line which enables us to say, for instance, that pressure for a Factory Act is industrial action, but pressure for the ratification of the Washington Hours Convention political. Extreme cases are easy to define; but there is a vast middle ground with which the trade unions must concern themselves and this escapes definition of a kind that will not hamper the trade union in legitimate activity vital to its purpose. And there are certain types of political action by trade unions--a strike against war, for example--which I do not think they ought in the interest of the community itself, to abandon. Quite frankly, I should have liked to see a general strike proclaimed against the outbreak of war in 1914; and I conceive the power to act in that way as a necessary and wise protection of a people against a government which proposes such adventures. You cannot compartmentalize life; and where grave emergencies arise, the weapons to be utilized must be fitted to meet them. A government which knew that its declaration of war was, where it intended aggressive action, likely to involve a general strike, would be far less likely to think in belligerent terms. I do not see why such a weapon should be struck from the community’s hand. I do not forget that the German Republic was saved from the Kapp Putsch by a general strike.