It is no good for Mr. Lloyd George to attempt to cure the gathered ill of a century with half an hour or so of eloquence.  When Great Britain, in her supreme need, turns to the workmen she has trained in the ways of individualism for a century, she reaps the harvest individualism has sown.  She has to fight with that handicap.  Every regulation for the rapid mobilisation of labour is scrutinised to find the trick in it.

And they find the trick in it as often as not.  Smart individualistic “business experience” has been at the draughtsman’s elbow.  A man in an individualistic system does not escape from class ideas and prejudices by becoming an official.  There is profound and bitter wisdom in the deep distrust felt by British labour for both military and industrial conscription.

The breakdown of individualism has been so complete in Great Britain that we are confronted with the spectacle of this great and ancient kingdom reconstructing itself perforce, while it wages the greatest war in history.  A temporary nationalisation of land transit has been improvised, and only the vast, deep-rooted, political influence of the shipowners and coalowners have staved off the manifestly necessary step of nationalising shipping and coal.  I doubt if they will be able to stave it off to the end of the long struggle which is still before us if the militarism of Germany is really to be arrested and discredited.  Expropriation and not conscription will be the supreme test of Britain’s loyalty to her Allies.

The British shipowners, in particular, are reaping enormous but precarious profits from the war.  The blockade of Britain, by the British shipowners is scarcely less effective than the blockade of Germany by Britain.  With an urgent need of every ship for the national supplies, British ships, at the present moment of writing this, are still carrying cheap American automobiles to Australia.  They would carry munitions to Germany if their owners thought they had a sporting chance of not getting caught at it.  These British shipowners are a pampered class with great political and social influence, and no doubt as soon as the accumulating strain of the struggle tells to the extent of any serious restriction of their advantage and prospects, we shall see them shifting to the side of the at present negligible group of British pacifists.  I do not think one can count on any limit to their selfishness and treason.

I believe that the calculations of some of these extreme and apparently quite unreasonable “pacifists” are right.  Before the war is over there will be a lot of money in the pacifist business.  The rich curs of the West End will join hands with the labour curs of the Clyde.  The base are to be found in all classes, but I doubt if they dominate any.  I do not believe that any interest or group of interests in Great Britain can stand in the way of the will of the whole people to bring this struggle to a triumphant finish at any cost.  I do not believe that the most sacred ties of personal friendship and blood relationship with influential people can save either shipowners or coalowners or army contractors to the end.