once.  When the company refused the demand, the men appealed to the Council of the Federation, who at once called on the Waterside Workers and Seamens Unions at Wellington to cease work.  Within a few days the position looked so serious that the Premier invited both parties to a conference, at which he presided in person, in the hope of bringing about an agreement to refer the matters in dispute to an arbitrator to be mutually agreed upon.  The officials of The Federation, however, said there was nothing to submit to an arbitrator:  they had made a demand, and unless it was complied with by the shipping company and the Union of merchants at Wellington who were in league with the Company in victimizing the men who took part in the meeting in aid of the Coal-miners, the strike must go on.  The Merchants and Shipping Company’s Unions pointed out that what had been done was in direct opposition to the terms of the formal agreement signed less than a year before, and they refused to have anything more to do with the Federation on any terms.  The conference thus ended in an open declaration of war.  The time had evidently come for the Federation of Labor to make good the assertions so often made by its lecturers and agitators, of its power to force the rest of the community to submission.  It would be difficult to imagine a more favorable position for carrying such a policy into effect:  New Zealand, it must be borne in mind, is a country without an army.  For some years past, it is true, a system of military training for all her young men between eighteen and twenty-five has been enforced by law, but except for training purposes, there is no military force in the Dominion, either of regulars or militia; and it is now forty-five years since the last company of British soldiers left its shores.  Law has been maintained, and order enforced, by a police force under the control of the Government of the Dominion, and while the force is undoubtedly a good and trustworthy one, its numbers have never been large in proportion to the population.  This year the entire force throughout the country is very little more than 850, which includes officers as well as men.  It can hardly be wondered at that the officials of The Federation of Labor were convinced that, if they could arrange a general strike of the workers, the police force would be powerless to deal with it.  On the failure of the attempt of the Premier to bring about a settlement between the parties by arbitration, the Federation proclaimed a general strike of all Unions affiliated to themselves throughout the country, and of all other Unions that were in sympathy with them in their policy of giving united Labor the control of society.  The order to cease work was at once obeyed, as a matter of course, by all the Federation Unions, which practically meant all the workers engaged on vessels registered in the Dominion and trading on the coast, all workers on wharves and piers, carters in the cities, and coal