So many of these after-the-war problems bring one back to the question of how far the war has put the Fear of God into the hearts of responsible men.There is really no other reason in existence that I can imagine why they should ask themselves the question, "Have I done my best?" and that still more important question, "Am I doing my best now?" And so while I hear plenty of talk about the great reorganisations that are to come after the war, while there is the stir of doubt among the /rentiers/ whether, after all, they will get paid, while the unavoidable stresses and sacrifices of the war are making many people question the rightfulness of much that they did as a matter of course, and of much that they took for granted, Iperceive there is also something dull and not very articulate in this European world, something resistant and inert, that is like the obstinate rolling over of a heavy sleeper after he has been called upon to get up."Just a little longer....Just for /my/ time."One thought alone seems to make these more intractable people anxious.I thrust it in as my last stimulant when everything else has failed."There will be /frightful/ trouble with labour after the war," I say.
They try to persuade themselves that military discipline is breaking in labour....
2
What does British labour think of the outlook after the war?
As a distinctive thing British labour does not think."Class-conscious labour," as the Marxists put it, scarcely exists in Britain.The only convincing case I ever met was a bath-chairman of literary habits Eastbourne.The only people who are, as a class, class-conscious in the British community are the Anglican gentry and their fringe of the genteel.Everybody else is "respectable." The mass of British workers find their thinking in the ordinary halfpenny papers or in /John Bull./ The so-called labour papers are perhaps less representative of British Labour than any other section of the press; the /Labour Leader/, for example, is the organ of such people as Bertrand Russell, Vernon Lee, Morel, academic /rentiers/ who know about as much as of the labour side of industrialism as they do of cock-fighting.All the British peoples are racially willing and good-tempered people, quite ready to be led by those they imagine to be abler than themselves.They make the most cheerful and generous soldiers in the whole world, without insisting upon that democratic respect which the Frenchman exacts.They do not criticise and they do not trouble themselves much about the general plan of operations, so long as they have confidence in the quality and good will of their leading.But British soldiers will of their loading.But British soldiers will hiss a general when they think he is selfish, unfeeling, or a muff.And the socialist propaganda has imported ideas of public service into private employment.Labour in Britain has been growing increasingly impatient of bad or selfish industrial leadership.
Labour trouble in Great Britain turns wholly upon the idea crystallised in the one word "profiteer." Legislation and regulation of hours of labour, high wages, nothing will keep labour quiet in Great Britain if labour thinks it is being exploited for private gain.
Labour feels very suspicious of private gain.For that suspicion a certain rather common type of employer is mainly to blame.
Labour believes that employers is mainly to blame.Labour believes that employers as a class cheat workmen as a class, plan to cheat them of their full share in the common output, and drive hard bargains.It believes that private employers are equally ready to sacrifice the welfare of the nation and the welfare of the workers for mere personal advantage.It has a traditional experience to support these suspicions.
In no department of morals have ideas changed so completely during the last eight years as in relation to "profits".Eighty years ago everyone believed in the divine right of property to do what it pleased its advantages, a doctrine more disastrous socially than the divine right of kings.There was no such sense of the immorality of "holding up" as pervades the public conscience to-day.The worker was expected not only to work, but to be grateful for employment.The property owner held his property and handed it out for use and development or not, just as he thought fit.These ideas are not altogether extinct today.
Only a few days ago I met a magnificent old lady of seventy nine or eighty, who discoursed upon the wickedness of her gardener in demanding another shilling a week because of war prices.
She was a valiant and handsome personage.A face that had still a healthy natural pinkness looked out from under blond curls, and an elegant and carefully tended hand tossed back some fine old lace to gesticulate more freely.She had previously charmed her hearers by sweeping aside certain rumours that were drifting about.
"Germans invade /Us!/" she cried."Who'd /let/ 'em, I'd like to know? Who'd /let/ 'em?"And then she reverted to her grievance about the gardener.
"I told him that after the war he'd be glad enough to get anything.Grateful! They'll all be coming back after the war--all of 'em, glad enough to get anything.Asking for another shilling indeed!"Everyone who heard her looked shocked.But that was the tone of everyone of importance in the dark years that followed the Napoleonic wars.That is just one survivor of the old tradition.
