that although in each case the original strikers were defeated, their successors obtained the terms, and even more than the terms, for which they fought. The defence forces of the state constitute a special case. When we turn to the ordinary public services, central and local, quite different considerations emerge. If you analyse Whitehall, for instance, you will find a very small body of men and women who may be regarded as concerned with the making of policy; below them is another body, perhaps two or three times as large, engaged in assembling the material out of which policy is made, and applying it in minor cases; while below these once more is a vast army of clerks engaged in routine work of a more or less mechanical kind. To this last class, it cannot, I think, be said that government emerges as an employer different in kind from what they would encounter in the ordinary labour market. General economic conditions govern their pay; in France and America, indeed, it is below, rather than above, the level obtaining elsewhere for their kind of work. All their interests go along with those engaged in similar employment outside the sphere of government activity. Their union, therefore, with persons in private firms seems to me justified in order to raise their general economic level; and I do not see the justice of prohibiting it as was done by the Baldwin Government in the Trades Disputes Act of 1927. I think, further, that they are entitled to strike, if there is no other way in which they can, as they think, secure the enforcement of their demands; though I think, also, that the executive would be justified in compelling them to exhaust the resources of a comprehensive scheme of conciliation before they went so far. The history, indeed, of most modern civil services. France being a notable exception[35] shows clearly that there is no danger of officials abusing the right to strike. But it shows also the unwisdom of leaving the government free to determine the substance of the contract of service. It is just as likely as any private employer to extract the most it can get for the least it needs to give; and it is no more fit than any other employer to be left uncontrolled in this field. The more labour conditions in government service are determined finally by an independent authority, the more reasonable they are likely to be. We must not be led away by false claims to a special majesty born of its sovereign character to regard the state as entitled to a peculiar and uncontrolled power over its servants. History shows that it is just as likely as anyone else to abuse an unlimited authority.