Barbara and I turned south on the first day of the strike; and, by the time we reached Crawleigh Abbey, it was over. In the tone of my father-in-law, however, I detected a new rancour such as I had not met since the almost daily strikes and lock-outs before the war. Neave had been warned for duty; and, as he changed out of uniform, I fancied that father and son were like a pair of reluctant game-cocks, as difficult to drag out of a fight as to urge in. “I regret nothing,” said Crawleigh on the first night, “that shews labour it can’t hold the country to ransom. If I’d been the prime minister, though, I’d have recalled every man jack of them to the colours . . .” “And if they refused to come?,” I ventured to interrupt. “After being ordered to mobilize?,” asked Neave with the aloof patience of a Guards officer in teaching a civilian his A.B.C. “Yes,” I answered. “In 1914 the regular officer threatened to resign if he were ordered to put down rebellion in Ulster. That’s never been quoted, but you may be sure it’s not been forgotten. And if you ever try to use troops against an industrial strike . . .” “I should use troops to protect life and property,” Crawleigh interposed. “A very few days without trains, and the babies in every city would die for want of milk. One hopes that these drastic steps will never be necessary. One hopes the lesson’s been taken to heart.” “I hope so too,” I said; but I knew Crawleigh to be only one of many who regretted that the strike had not been fought to a finish. As I began my articles, I noticed sadly that neither he nor Neave, neither the capitalist press which called our paper “bolshevistic” nor the labour sheets which damned us with faint, patronizing praise suggested that strikes and lock-outs ought to be as impossible in a civilized state as a wheat-corner or that, whoever was to blame and whoever was punished, the noncombatant majority suffered most. “Human nature being what it is . . .” began Sir Roger Dainton, with a fine affectation of political wisdom, when I put this view before him. I had driven Barbara to luncheon at Crowley Court; and throughout the meal our host droned of high taxation without considering the capital loss of a strike. “Every one’s the poorer for a struggle that has changed nothing and proved nothing,” I said. “In time, perhaps, the agitators will see that,” answered Lady Dainton, who had been expatiating, from the other end of the table, on class-hatred and proving in alternate sentences that the man Thomas was responsible for all this unrest and that Mr. Thomas really seemed the only person who would stand up to these bolshevists.