grave words of a few weeks later. "We cannot go on," said the Prime
Minister in effect, "depending upon foreign countries for our munitions.
We haven't the ships to spare to bring them home, and the cost is too
great. We _must_ make them ourselves." "Yes--and _quicker_!" Mr. Lloyd
George had already said, with a sharp emphasis, meant to "hustle" that
portion of the nation which still required hustling; overpainting his
picture, no doubt, but with quite legitimate rhetoric, in order to produce
his effect.

The result of that fresh "hustling" was the appointment of the Dilution
Commissioners, a second Munitions Act amending the first, and a vast
expansion all over the country of the organisation which had seemed so
vast before. It was not till midwinter, in the very midst of the new and
immense effort I have been describing, that the Minister of Munitions and
those working with him convinced themselves that, without another resolute
push, the barrier across the stream of the nation's will might still
fatally hold it back. More and more men were wanted every week--in the
Army and the workshops--and there were not men to go round. The second
push had to be given--it was given--and it still firmly persists.

In the spring of 1915, the executives of the leading trade-unions had
promised the Government the relaxation of their trade rules for the period
of the war. Many of the trade-union leaders--Mr. Barnes, Mr. Henderson,
Mr. Hodge, and many others--have worked magnificently in this sense, and
many unions have been thoroughly loyal throughout their ranks to the
pledge given in their name. The iron-moulders, the shipwrights, the
brassworkers may be specially mentioned. But in the trades mostly
concerned with ammunition, there were certain places and areas where the
men themselves, as distinct from their responsible leaders, offered a
dogged, though often disguised resistance. Personally, I think that any