could have peace on favourable terms—including a frontier more generous than that laid down by the Allied Supreme Council-as soon as it liked to agree to it.

On August 6th, Mr Lloyd George presented a further ultimatum to M. Kameneff, threatening a definite declaration of war if the Russians did not stop their westward march.

This was transmitted to Lenin, who, however, before receipt of it had despatched to Mr Lloyd George an offer declaring that as soon as Poland would agree to the armistice terms Russia would withdraw her troops from Poland, on condition that the Allies, and particularly France, agreed not to advance or to support any advance against Soviet Russia on any front, and to withdraw the army of General Wrangel from the Crimea.

In reply to the ultimatum itself, Lenin declared that arrangements had already been completed with the Poles for an armistice and a discussion of peace preliminaries. That discussion subsequently began at Minsk.

Meanwhile, on August 8th, Mr Lloyd George went to Lympne to confer with the French Government and military representatives; he issued from that conference statements about Russia's attitude which I am unable to reconcile even remotely with Russia's message, and suggested that, owing to the advance of the Russian armies and the alleged threat against Polish independence, war between Russia and Great Britain was imminent.

The storm of Labour protests at this week-end, however, sufficiently intimidated Mr Lloyd George to prevent him from openly advocating a declaration of war; he favoured, instead, the Blockade and other naval measures.

The first half of 1920 had seen a 'slump' in direct action thus the Labour Party Conference, which in June, 1919, as we have seen, had been talking about effective action,' the 'enforcement' of demands, and the 'unreserved' use of industrial power, confined itself in June, 1920, as far as the Russian question was concerned, to proposing a further deputation to the Prime Minister. Now, however, suddenly, Labour's patience was exhausted, and all technical obstacles were swept aside by the decisive action of the Parliamentary Committee of the Trades Union Congress, the Executive of the Labour Party, and the Parliamentary Labour Party. Stimulated by an overwhelming flood of resolutions from the rank-and-file all over the country, they met on the Monday evening and passed a resolution setting up a Council of Action to organise a universal down-tools movement to frustrate all the plans which they believed the Government to be entertaining-war, military or naval, the Blockade, and the continued sending of munitions to Pilsudski in Poland or Wrangel in South Russia.

Their case was presented to Mr Lloyd George by the mouth of Mr Ernest Bevin on the 10th August. Mr Lloyd George capitulated-he not merely climbed down from his former position, he pretended that he had never taken it up. The opposition to peace with Russia was not merely defeated, it was annihilated, it was blown into space. Practically the whole of the Press turned round to declaring that war had never been intended.

On August 6th-two days after Mr Lloyd George had issued his ultimatum to Russia, threatening war if the Russian armies advanced across the ethnographical frontier of Poland (across which the Russian

armies promptly advanced), the Times, in its main leading article, said:

'It is a terrible truth that once more we stand upon the edge of a crisis fraught with possibilities only less tragic than those that lowered over us in the first week of August six years ago.'

And again, in the same article :

'We cannot hide from ourselves that the outlook is very dark. We must face it with the same unanimity and the same courage with which we faced the crisis of 1914. The hour when so sore a menace is impending over us is no time for division or recriminations. Mr Henderson and his friends will do themselves no good service with the nation by summoning meetings of protest at such a time. The plain duty of all parties on the approach of what may be a supreme national crisis is to drop all lesser things and to bend all the mind and all the strength of the nation to the work they may have to do.'

These sentences form, by themselves, sufficient comment on the subsequent declarations of Government and Press that, in declaring that Labour would not have a war with Russia over Poland, the Council of Action was 'forcing an open door.'

The war was stopped; the whole Labour movement was unanimous; Mr Thomas1 and Mr Clynes, who had previously been the most definite and conspicuous opponents, within the movement, of direct action, declared themselves unequivocally in favour of it on this issue.

1 See Appendix V.

We have now to revert to the industrial questions out of which the urgent demand for a ‘General Staff for Labour' arose, and analyse the machinery called → into play to establish that General Staff, the machinery called into play to establish the Council of Action, and the recognition that one central and effective body must be constituted to co-ordinate and direct the movement in industrial and political matters alike.

The more closely we look at the Labour movement, the less is it possible to disentangle what is 'industrial' from what is 'political.'

XI

THE COUNCIL OF ACTION AND A 'GENERAL STAFF' FOR LABOUR

PERHAPS the most ultimately significant thing about the whole Railway Strike has nothing to do with the wages which were the sole cause of the dispute.

Long before the war, there had been raised here and there voices demanding a complete reorganisation of the structure of organised Labour for fighting purposes: one heard whispers, and even shouts, about a 'General Staff' for Labour. The Trades Union Congress had never been in a position to act as the real co-ordinator of the movement. Apart from special congresses for special purposes, which have been fairly frequent of late, the Congress meets once a year to pass resolutions so numerous and so various that adequate discussion is quite impossible; and, as a rule, nobody is definitely entrusted with the task of putting the resolutions into effect. Many of these resolutions are derisively known in the movement as 'the hardy annuals.' Very often, indeed, they are merely of the kind known as 'pious,' and cover activities which nobody connected with the Trades Union Congress is in a position to carry out. Until 1920, the antiquated habit was persisted in of solemnly presenting the resolutions, by personal deputation, to Ministers of the Crown-who, of course, did not take the faintest notice.