The great strike of transportation workers, in the summer of 1911, widened the breach between Laborites and Liberals, and between the extreme and moderate Socialists. This strike spread from the dockers of Liverpool to London, from the dockers to the railway workers, and then to the teamsters and drivers of the larger cities, until a general tie-up of transportation was threatened. It came very near being a model general strike. Its violence was met with a call for the troops. The labor members in Parliament protested earnestly against the use of soldiers. But the government was prompt and firm in its suppression of disorder. A bitter debate took place between the government and the labor leaders.[47] How much of this give and take must be attributed to the play of politics, it is impossible to declare. But this great strike clearly revealed the difference between violent Socialism and moderate radicalism. The one is willing to effect revolutions through law and order, the other to effect them through violence and disruption. The moderate Socialists seem willing to take a middle course between these extremes. The following quotation from a speech delivered by Ramsay MacDonald, leader of the Labor Party, at a convention of the I.L.P., clearly illustrates the moderate view: "We can cut off kings' heads after a few battles, we can change a monarchy into a republic, we can deprive people of their titles, and we can make similar superficial alterations by force; but nobody who understands the power of habit and of custom in human conduct, who appreciates the fact that by far and away the greater amount of an action is begun, controlled, and specified by the system of social interrelationship in which we live, move, and have our being; and still more, nobody who understands the delicate and intricate complexity of production and exchange which keeps modern society going, will dream for a single moment of changing it by any act of violence. As soon as that act is committed, every vital force in society will tend to re-establish the relationship which we have been trying to end, and what is more, these vital forces will conquer us in the form of a violent reaction, a counter revolution. When we cut off a newt's tail, a newt's tail will grow on again.