simple:  they mean to win it; and they mean to make as much money out of it as ever they can.’  Certainly, that is very simple; but before you judge them, put yourselves in their place.  There are great outcries against profiteers, for making exorbitant profits out of the War, and against munition workers, for delaying work in order to get higher wages.  I do not defend either of them; they are unimaginative and selfish, and I do not care how severely they are dealt with; but I do say that the majority of them are not wicked in intention.  A good many of the more innocent profiteers are men whose sin is that they take an offer of two shillings rather than an offer of eighteenpence for what cost them one and a penny.  Some of us, in our weaker moments, might be betrayed into doing the same.  As for the munition workers, I remember what Goldsmith, who had known the bitterest poverty, wrote to his brother.  ‘Avarice’, he said, ’in the lower orders of mankind is true ambition; avarice is the only ladder the poor can use to preferment.  Preach then, my dear Sir, to your son, not the excellence of human nature nor the disrespect of riches, but endeavour to teach him thrift and economy.  Let his poor wandering uncle’s example be placed in his eyes.  I had learned from books to love virtue before I was taught from experience the necessity of being selfish.’

The profiteers and the munition workers are endeavouring, incidentally, to better their own position.  But make no mistake; the bulk of these people would rather die than allow one spire of English grass to be trodden under the foot of a foreign trespasser.  Their chief sin is that they do not fear.  They think that there is plenty of time to do a little business for themselves on the way to defeat the enemy.  I cannot help remembering the mutiny at the Nore, which broke out in our fleet during the Napoleonic wars.  The mutineers struck for more pay and better treatment, but they agreed together that if the French fleet should put in an appearance during the mutiny, all their claims should be postponed for a time, and the French fleet should have their first attention.

Employers and employed do, no doubt, find in some trades to-day that their relations are strained and irksome.  They would do well to take a lesson from the Army, where, with very few exceptions, there is harmony and understanding between those who take orders and those who give them.  It is only in the Army that you can see realized the ideal of ancient Rome.

     Then none was for a party,
       Then all were for the State;
     Then the great man helped the poor,
       And the poor man loved the great.

Why is the Army so far superior to most commercial and industrial businesses?  The secret does not lie in State employment.  There is plenty of discontent and unrest among the State-employed railway men and munition workers.  It lies rather in the habit of mutual help and mutual trust.  If any civilian employer of labour wants to have willing workpeople, let him take a hint from the Army.  Let him live with his workpeople, and share all their dangers and discomforts.  Let him take thought for their welfare before his own, and teach self-sacrifice by example.  Let him put the good of the nation before all private interests; and those whom he commands will do for him anything that he asks.