t of government employees to organize and to strike
and the determination of the French Socialists and labor unionists to
use the opportunity to take a step towards the "general strike."

Never has the issue between capitalism and Socialism been more sharply
defined than in Premier Briand's impulsively frank declaration after the
strike (though it was later retracted): "I say emphatically, if the laws
have not given the government the means of keeping the country master of
its railways and the national defense, it would not have hesitated to
take recourse to illegality."

This is almost the exact declaration of Ex-President Roosevelt in his
Decoration Day speech in 1911, when he said that really revolutionary
men dreaded and hated him because they knew that _he wouldn't let the
Constitution stand in the way of punishing them if they did wrong_.

Milder but no less positive expressions of an intention to use illegal
means to coerce labor, if it does not act as present authorities
dictate, were to be heard from responsible sources both in England and
America after the recent British railway strike. The non-Socialist press
then came almost unanimously to the conclusion that an attempt must be
made to take away the sole weapon by which labor is able to protect
itself or advance its position as soon as "the public" is damaged by its
use--which amounts to reducing wage earners to the status of children,
soldiers, or other wards of the community. "If railroad and telegraph
strikes are many and violent," said _Collier's Weekly_, "they will
encourage government ownership without unionization."[274]

The _Outlook_ stopped short of government ownership, but announced a
similar principle: "The railways are public highways; they must be
controlled by the nation for the public good; the operation of the
railways must not be stopped because of disputes; and, as a corollary to
this last law of necessity, the government must furnish an adequate and
just method of settling railway disputes."[275] Every step in government
control is to be accompanied by a step in the control of labor, and
restriction of the power of labor unions. The right of employees to
protect themselves by leaving their work in a body is to be taken away
completely, while the right to discharge or punish is to remain intact
in persons over whom the employees can have little or no control.

Governments are evidently ready to proceed to illegality for the sake of
se