I am as willing, I hope, as anyone to agree that an interruption of a vital public service is undesirable, and that every possible step to minimize the possibility of its occurrence should be taken. But I do not think the denial of the right to strike obtains this end in any of them; and I do not believe that the same considerations apply to every sort of vital public service. It must, I think, make a difference whether the industry is primarily operated for private profit or no; for only in the latter case is its quality as both vital and public fully recognized. No one, surely, can examine the record of the coal industry either in England or in America and say that the motives which underlie its ownership by private interest are compatible with the view that an uninterrupted service to the community has been the first object of the owners. There are several reasons of primary importance for retaining the right to strike so long as private ownership continues in this sphere. If, for instance, a steamship company proposes to send out its ship under the conditions in which the _Vestris_ of ill-fated memory sailed in the spring of 1929, I think the crew would be justified in striking in the public interest. So, also, I should argue that the Seamen’s Union would be justified in striking, to see to it, if it could, that every vessel putting to sea carries with it wireless equipment. Again, a body of miners might, in my judgment, justifiably strike if they believed that some part of a pit to which they were to be sent was in fact too dangerous for coal to be hewed there without an alteration of the physical conditions of mining in that particular place. I should, further, urge that a strike to secure a national agreement for uniform conditions in a particular industry as against a variety of local agreements was a justifiable enterprise if that end could not be attained in any other way. My view, broadly, reduces itself to this. Where the vital industry is in public hands, the conditions which should operate are those which relate to government service in general where it is in private hands; the state is, I think, justified in seeing to it that the danger of dislocation is reduced to a minimum; but it is not justified in saying that, in the event of a disagreement, the men shall always abide by the results of compulsory arbitration. For, first of all, the men will not always do so; their refusal, doubtless, will be exceptional, but there will be instances in which it will occur. The famous munitions strikes on the Clyde, and the South Wales Miners’ strike, during the war show that this is the case. It is, I suggest, obvious folly to attempt legislation which cannot be enforced at the critical point of urgency. The business of the state, therefore, is not to prohibit, but to find how best to make the use of the strike the final and not the first instrument in conflict.