I do not, of course, deny that freedom of action in this field is capable of being abused. That is the nature of liberty. Any body of persons who exercise power may abuse it. It is an abuse of power when an employer dismisses his workmen because he does not like their political opinions. It is an abuse of power when the owners of halls in Boston refuse to hire them to the promoters of a meeting in memory of Sacco and Vanzetti. It was an abuse of power when British naval officers connived at the attempted internment of the Belgian socialist, M. Camille Huysmans, in England. It was, I think, an abuse of power when the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge refused to admit Nonconformists as students, or Parliament to seat Mr Bradlaugh because he was an infidel. But the trade unions are no more likely, on the historic record, to abuse their power than is Parliament itself. The latter, if it wished, has the legal competence to abolish the trade unions, to disenfranchise the working classes, to confine membership of the House of Commons to persons with an independent income. We know that Parliament is unlikely to do any of these things because omnicompetence, when gravely abused, ceases to be omnicompetent. And the same truth holds, as it seems to me, of the liberty to proclaim a general strike. A much more difficult problem arises where the second of my four principles is concerned. A government is, I think, entitled generally to the loyal and continuous service of its employees. It is therefore entitled to make regulations which restrain their liberty of action. The army and navy and the police, in particular, occupy a special position in the state; if they were free, like ordinary citizens, to withdraw their labour as they pleased, the executive power would be in an impossible position. The government, therefore, may make suitable regulations for their control. But it is important, in the framing of these regulations, that the conditions of service should be just. To be just, two principles are, I suggest, of primary importance. They should be made and administered in conjunction with those who are affected by them; and in their application or change executive action should not be the final court of appeal. The principles which, in England, we call Whitleyism are the _quid pro quo_ which government servants of this type are entitled to expect in return for the surrender of the right to strike; and Whitleyism must include the right of those servants to appeal from an executive decision to such a body as the Civil Service Division of the Industrial Court. To leave the executive sole master of the field is to invite the kind of purblind folly which resulted, in 1919, in the police strikes of Boston and London. Here, certainly, the fact that the governments concerned were the judges in their own cause made it impossible for the police to get either attention or justice without drastic action. And I draw your attention to the fact