"Loud applause greeted the announcement in Mr. Justice McCardie's Court. His Lordship was handed the agency message which he read aloud."

The Saturday Review of May 15th, true to the old British love of fair play, was glad to learn that there would be no reprisals by employers of labour. It observed:-" To pursue a policy of wage reductions would have been to turn the knife in the wound. The men have been sadly victimized by their leaders, who led them blindly into a futile strike, and to have returned to work to find. themselves victimized by their employers would have been fatal to their self-respect. The country has no quarrel with the workers as individuals, and it would not stand for this action on the part of the employers." How the editor refreshes his spirit with the contemplation of the excellent proof afforded by the strike of the ineluctable respect for order in the British character and its lesson for the world appears from the following observations:

"Even the strike has had its bright side. As soon as it broke out special correspondents of most of the important European newspapers hurried to London to follow the course of the revolution in Great Britain, for the more sensational and widely circulated English newspapers have printed so much from time to time about the Red Peril here that other countries held grossly distorted views of our industrial situation. All these correspondents have, of course, gone away immensely impressed by the fundamental sanity of the British public. The Parisians realize that, had they remained at home, they would have seen more arrests in their native city in one day, owing to the troubles during the Jeanne d'Arc celebrations, than they have seen in this country during the whole of the strike. However disastrous the economic consequences of the strike may be, it is some consolation to realize the influence British political tolerance and democracy may have in a world which was once more growing to believe that salvation may only be found in militarism and dictatorship."

That a general or sympathetic strike is a foolish instrument for Labour to employ in its struggle for a place in the sun of English Industrialism is the opinion of the New Statesman-a journal which our readers know has been inclined to favour Labour in its ambition to obtain hegemony among the social classes in the modern State. In its issue of May 22nd it moralises on the subject in this wise:

"The general result of the strike is not unsatisfactory. It has shown that an enormous industrial upheaval can take place, in this

country at any rate, without the loss of a single life. But what is far more important, it has shown that the weapon of the General Strike is practically worthless in the hands of those who are not prepared to go to all lengths of revolutionary violence. . . . For a General Strike without violence cannot succeed; it is almost a contradiction in terms. With violence, on the other hand, it amounts to a revolution-which the Trade Union world does not want nor seems ever likely to want. Everybody understands this now, and that is why the strike was perhaps worth while. We have bought experience at a pretty high price, but we have got it; and no section of the community, we suppose, is more satisfied with the bargain than the 'constitutional' leaders of the Labour movement. The irrepressible left-wingers are silenced; their dreams are dissolved; they must set about the Sisyphean task of converting the Trade Unions of Great Britain to revolutionary ideas, or admit failure."

The same journal, while blaming Mr. Baldwin for precipitating the General Strike in a moment of panic caused by the Natsopas (a new word coined to designate the National Society of Operative Printers and Assistants) declining to allow the Daily Mail to appear with a leading article entitled "For King and Country,' gives him unstinted praise for accepting the overtures of the General Council of the Trades Union Congress for calling off the strike. It says that when the strike ended "Mr. Baldwin had regained control of his Cabinet and had acquired so enormous a personal popularity in the country that he could afford to let all his colleagues resign if they wanted to. He took charge of affairs without consulting anybody, and without any Cabinet authorisation-which would certainly not have been forthcoming from the fight-to-a-finish section-he declared peace and insisted upon peace. . . . Some of his colleagues and many of his supporters railed at him for his 'weakness'; but this time he stood firm-and gave us peace. . . . He blundered on that Sunday night in agreeing to war, but ever since then he has fought for peace, and fought with an extraordinary measure of success."

**Renan somewhere says that all history is a sound Aristocrat -meaning that the chief liberties enjoyed by civilisation to-day were won by the labours of individual men having a native gift for political leadership. That is particularly true of England in the past; and now in the days of class struggles which naturally emerge from the fact that democracy is still in a state of fermentation it is an "aristocrat "-such as Stanley Baldwin-who must ride the whirlwind and direct the storm. Indeed it would appear from the

opinion of M. Emile Faguet that there is no prospect ahead of us for good government if democracy be not always tempered with a blend of aristocracy. This is how he expresses himself in "Le Culte de l'Incompétence":

C'est ce mélange de démocratie et d'aristocratie qui fait une bonne constitution. Mais il ne faut pas que cette constitution mixte soit une simple juxtaposition, ce qui ne ferait que mettre en contact des éléments hostiles. J'ai dit mélange' et j'aurais dû dire 'combinaison.' Il faut que, dans le maniement des affaires, aristocratie et démocratie soient combinées."

LEGAL ASPECT OF THE GENERAL STRIKE.-Both Sir John Simon, in the course of a speech in Parliament, and Mr. Justice Astbury in National Sailors' and Firemen's Union in Great Britain and Ireland v. Reed et al.,1 have given an opinion that the General Strike in Great Britain last month was absolutely illegal. Sir John Simon argued that, on fundamental constitutional grounds, a general, or sympathetic, strike was not a strike against employers so much as a strike against the public, Parliament and the Government to compel them to do something. He reminded the House that when Parliament gave immunity to trade unions under the Trades Disputes Act, 1906, it had lawful strikes in view, and not strikes that overthrew the organic law of the country. In connection with Sir John's opinion it might be mentioned that the Law Journal of May 22nd 2 expresses the view that a General Strike is not only an indictable offense under the statute Edw. III., De Conspiratoribus (1399), but that it constituted a tortious trespass on the case, as not being an act done in contemplation or furtherance of a trade dispute within the meaning of sec. 3 of the Trades Disputes Act. In the case before Astbury, J., above referred to, a motion was made by the National Sailors' and Firemen's Union for an interim injunction to restrain the defendant Reed, who was the secretary of a branch of the union, and certain other officials of the branch, from calling on members of the branch to leave their employments without the authority of the executive council, or contrary to the rules of the union. The injunction was granted. Being asked by counsel for the union, and also by the defendants, who were not represented by counsel, to state the general law on the matter before him, the learned Judge said:

"The so-called general strike was illegal, and those inciting to it or taking part in it were not protected by the Trade Disputes Act, 1 161 L.T. 391; 61 L.J. (N.S.) 442.

'P. 428,

1906, There was no trade dispute alleged to exist except in the case of the miners. No trade dispute existed or could exist between the Trades Union Congress on the one hand and the Government and nation on the other. The orders of the General Council were therefore illegal and the defendants were acting illegally. No member refusing to strike in obedience to illegal orders could lose his Trade Union benefits on that account. Members striking by illegal orders would not be entitled during the continuance of their strike to receive strike pay. Trade Union funds were held in a fiduciary capacity, and could not legally be used for, or depleted by, paying strike pay to those strikers who obeyed illegal orders. The defendants were defying the law, as well as breaking the rules of their Union."

THE "NINE DAYS" IN LONDON.-The following extract from a letter received in Canada from a citizen of London engaged in business there throws an interesting light upon life in the city during the "Nine Days" of the Great Strike:-"I see that a Sydney paper the other day described London just now as a 'City of Dreadful Night.' That is one of the most consummate lies even yellow journalism has achieved. . . . After all I am going about my business—an affected business-all the time. I have three or four times walked all the way, yet I have not once got into a crowd. I have seen nothing resembling a disturbance. I go through a restricted office routine every day with all my usual associates, and from to-morrow, if our information is right, we may even in the office be practically normal. Out on the streets of course, or if one has to travel anywhere, things are topsy-turvy. A marvellous regiment of cars, packed to the gunwales with all sorts and conditions of people; amazing crowds of cheerful people walking for all they are worth; cars of all shapes and sizes with signs Stop me for a lift' or 'Going to Walham Green!'almost pestering you to give you a free lift. Charabancs, lorries and wagons packed with amused pople; omnibuses with a high policeman by the driver, and a 'special' sitting on the bonnet-an occasional 'busful of soldiers with steel helmets-a still more occasional armoured car cruising with a vicious quick-firer mounted with a couple of phlegmatic soldiers beside it. That is the strike as the ordinary city worker sees and lives it. He gets very tired before he gets home. But as for the hardships he grins, or by now yawns, except the girls, who are loving it. And if you told the average Londoner that he was living in a City of Dreadful Night' he'd laugh, and probably show you his theatre tickets."

THE ADVANCED SCHOOL OF LAW AGAIN.-Our readers will remember that in the May number we reprinted Professor Herbert A. Smith's letter to the London Times concerning the proposed establishment in London of an Advanced School of Law for the Empire. They will be interested in learning what Law Notes, which speaks more or less authoritatively for the Law Society, thinks of the proposition. We quote from the May number of that periodical :— "Professor H. A. Smith, of McGill University, Montreal, advocated last month in the Times the desirability of establishing an Empire School of Law. The main reasons, the Professor contended, were, first, the need for conserving the legislative energy of the Empire, and, secondly, the need in London of a real library of Imperial Law. Professor H. C. Gutteridge, Dean of the Faculty of Laws in the University of London, approves the scheme. It is stated that there is a steady and growing demand from the Dominions for advanced tuition and guidance in legal subjects. The establishment of an Imperial School of Law has been the ideal for many years of Professors and University Lecturers. It is a worthy ideal, but to put it into practical working operation is a difficult matter. How will such a School conserve the legislative energy of the Empire? How will the School give practical effect to this object? As to the second object, the establishment of an Imperial Library, practitioners do not experience much difficulty in getting access to the laws of the different Dominions through existing libraries, and students are generally admitted."

Now as much as we admire the breadth of view and practical good sense that usually attend the utterances of our contemporary we cannot let the above pass without cautioning it to "take a thought and mend" in its relation to the interests of the Empire. Its voice at the moment is the voice of the Little Englander, which to-day has little wisdom and less charm. The proposed school is an Imperial gesture of even more importance than the Rhodes Scholarships at Oxford. Let Britons overseas approve of the principle and the scheme will take care of itself in practice.

THE RUSSO-GERMAN TREATY. Much loose talk has taken. place in the Continental press over the treaty recently negotiated between the governments of Germany and Russia. It is being bruited that Germany is seeking the aid of Russia to dictate to the League of Nations just how far it can go in the appeasement of