It was clearly impossible to guarantee the adequate war output of this vast aggregate of factories and workshops on the basis of the old peace conditions—with an uncertain supply of skilled labour shifting about from shop to shop along the ordinary channels of demand and supply. The habit of “stealing” labour by the offer of higher wages had already grown to so high a point in the early days of the war that the Munitions Committee had had to issue an order under the Defence of the Realm Act making it an offence to “entice.”[97] Thus the peace freedom of movement had already been suspended. But now it was necessary to carry the restrictions further and to guarantee to the nation at war a hold on its workmen similar in kind, though not in degree, to the hold on its soldiers. Mr. Lloyd George characteristically wished to make the bold appeal, and to say to the workmen: “Submit to the same discipline as your sons in the trenches. Place yourselves under the same law, with this only difference—that you are better-paid men.”[98] But this proposal, when laid before the leaders of the Trade Unions, met with fierce opposition. The “conscription of labour,” as it was called, was denounced as a “new slavery.” Some degree of national consent to such a measure was plainly necessary. So that proposal was dropped, and the Ministry of Munitions set out to search for a new policy. The policy finally agreed upon took shape in the first Munitions Act and the subsequent amending measures. Round those measures a great strife afterwards arose, and it may be worth while to say something as to their origin and justification. It was absolutely necessary, if the armies were to be properly supplied with the immense mass of munitions required, that the workers should both consent to the limitation of their freedom of movement and should also suspend a number of those limitations and conditions of toil which had been won in the course of the long conflict between Capital and Labour. It was desirable to come to a bargain; and with that view the Trade Unions were consulted at every point. If the Government must trust Labour, Labour must also trust the Government. Labour must have assurance that a temporary suspension of conditions should not prejudice the position in time of peace. That assurance had been already given, and was now formally embodied in the Munitions Act.[99] On these broad lines had grown up this Concordat, which, with all its frictions and inevitable misunderstandings, still carried the country through the moments of gravest peril. The liberty of Labour was gravely restricted; but the great and sufficient reward for such a sacrifice to every patriotic workman always was the knowledge that brave lives were being saved and brave hearts sustained at the front. Another important thing was that the country was being saved also.