Lloyd George had no governmental red tape about his methods. For
instance, he ordered a notice to be put up in each of the local
munition offices, inviting callers who had inventions to submit them at
once for sympathetic examination. Any one who went to the Ministry of
Munitions in Whitehall and had real business could quickly see the
Minister. He had no use for a halo of officialdom. A thousand
difficulties rose to meet him as he built up the new organization, but
he trampled them underfoot and went forward, heedless of whether he was
making enemies or friends. An intermediate and important obstacle to
his work was the fact that many of the trade-unions of the country had
established rules which operated against an increase of production.
These rules had been built up as protection against capitalists whose
sole idea might be profits. It was necessary to sweep away these
restrictions, and one of the arguments which Lloyd George used to the
men was that he was not allowing employers to make fortunes out of the
country's need, but was taking away all but a percentage of their new
income and giving it to the Government. Even this was not sufficient
in some cases to get all the workmen in the proper frame of mind.
Lloyd George went down himself and addressed meetings of the men. Here
is an extract from one of his speeches: "The enlisted workman cannot
choose his locality of action. He cannot say, 'I am prepared to fight
at Neuve Chapelle, but I won't fight at Festubert, and I am not going
near the place called "Wipers."' He can't say, 'I have been in the
trenches ten and a half hours, and the trade-unions won't let me work
more than ten hours.' He can't say, 'You have not enough men here, and
I have been doing the work of two men, and my trade-unions won't allow
me to do more than my share.' When the house is on fire, questions of
procedure and precedence and division of labor disappear. You can't
say you are not liable to serve at three o'clock in the morning if the
fire is proceeding. You can't choose the hour. You can't argue as to
whose duty it is to carry the water-bucket and whose duty it is to put
it into a crackling furnace. You must put the fire out. There is only
one way to do it--that is, everything must give way to duty and
good-fellowship, good-comradeship, and determination. You must put the
whole of your strength into obtaining victory for your native land and
for the liberties of the world."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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