The Great Strike.
On the 27th September the National Union of Railwaymen proclaimed a great strike throughout England and Scotland on account of certain demands in connection with wages, which the Government were not prepared to concede. We are not to enter upon the technical questions at issue, but simply to express our concern as to the fact that it should be possible for one section of the community to take such an extraordinary step with hardly any notice, and to attempt to stop the whole traffic of the country. Such action certainly bespeaks a lack of the right relations between employees and employers, and leads us to fear that there are slumbering volcanoes in our midst that may yet prove disastrous in the extreme to the life of the nation. The sum of the Ten Commandments is largely forgotten: “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God . . . and thy neighbour as thyself.” The strike was settled by a partial agreement on the side of the Government on Sabbath the 5th October. It is highly regrettable that it was on the Lord’s Day that the Prime Minister and members of the Cabinet had their final interviews with the representatives of the railwaymen, and arranged a settlement. Personally we do not expect a blessing on such proceedings, and fear that they are forerunners of evil days still to come.
The League of Nations.
As a result of the terrible lessons of the War, prominent men in several of the Allied countries are promoting a League of Peace between the nations that may prevent the possibility of future wars. While the object they have in view is highly commendable, and some of the means proposed to accomplish the end entirely appropriate, yet we feel that there is far too much reliance upon human resolution in the matter. Political leaders seem deeply insensible of the depravity of human nature as containing the elements of violence which none but God can restrain, notwithstanding the German objective lesson, and little or no acknowledgment is made at these “League” meetings of the necessity of dependence upon the wisdom and power of the glorious Prince of Peace, without whom nothing permanently beneficial can be accomplished.