WHAT WAR HAS DONE TO GREAT BRITAIN.

Pukekohe & Waiuku Times, Volume 6, Issue 288, 29 June 1917, Page 3 (Supplement)

WHAT WAR HAS DONE TO GREAT BRITAIN.

A SHREWD AMERICANS VIEWS. A few months ago the "Metropolitan Magazine,' - of New Mr. William Hard, a foremost journalistic authority in the United States on business, political, and social organisation, to London to find an answer to the question : —What is goiߣ_toTiappen alter the war?

The first of Mr. Hard's articles is published in the April number of the "Metropolitan, '"and the subject or text appears! to have been suggested by Lord Northcliffe at an interview he gave the author. "Been to the front?"' asked Lord Northcliffe.

"Not yet," said Mr. Hard. Jl'm trying to find cut what's happening in England it<elf." "Excellent," said Lord Northcliffe

"Look at it in this wav; Just put down the changes that are happening in the English people. That's what is going to last for England. No matter what the details of peace may be, those changes in Britain are going to last —■ changes in our institutions 1 , and even changes in our character. There are lots of them. Get them together." And that is what Mr. Hard ha" done; lie says at the outset that the war has made the English gentler and kinder. "It has made them, in a good sense of the flord, softer. I am convinced that one reason why the English have not been brutalised iy that they have not been militarised. To have militarism it is necestary that the military shall be top dog. But the military are no nearer being top dog in England to-day than they were in August, 1914." To illustrate this he describes the tribunals which administer the Compulsory Service Acts. The tribunals he considers the most English institutions he ha.! ever seen in England. They are ridiculous from the standpoint of militarism. They are not atppcinted even by the nation. Labour is given adequate representation; so is every other important local interest. They summon the prospective soldier before them. They summon the army repre tentative, who has no vote, but is there simply to argue for the r,:rmy as a barrister in *ourt. The decision is made by an assemblage of local civilian .interests. Yet, as he pointed out. although the English "are actually administering national conscription on a sort of local option barfs," the army does, however;, get the men. INDUSTRIAL RE-BIRTH, Mr. Hard has a good deal to say about the Declaration of London. "It was the climax," he says, "to the trustful period in English international history. The tentative signing of it by England, the final rejecting of it by England, and the present loathing of it bv England will explain much in the chalracter of the English people. . . If ever there was a nro-German document it was not Mr. Wilson's Poace Note—it was the Declaration of Lpndon."

But the trustfulne : s which was dominant in England in 1909 has departed. The present indications are "that never again in our lifetime will any representatives of England put their names to document which would plate new impediments in the wav of "the old thoroughly humane, but genuinely effective, unabated use of_ Englisli sea-power." The war has given England's industries a new speed—a new enthusiasm for organisation, investigation, and education, "really almost a new life," says Mr. Hard. "If ever there was a case of a Phoenix rising from its ashes it is the ense of this England, the mother of modern indu try, very old and very, tired, rising from the ojrre of war, again renewing its youth. "I have seen a battleship of firstclass size and of more than first-class

engine-power steaming to the Grand Fleet ready for action on the twentieth day cf the twenty-first month from the day on which the drawing for her were received byjthe shipyard." The war has produced a system in England which Mr. Hard calls the "scientific-management idea" unknown two years ago. The industrial future of England is. he consider- - , an assured success. It hiad no chance in 1914. Now it has been "created offhand, almost as a side isne, while the sir is still full of shells, by an England really energised." Mr. Hard believes l that "the war has put Briti-h labour in a position in which it may take a longer and quicker stride toward industrial democracy than has ever before been taken anywhere." It began when, as he pointed out, " the trade unions of Great Britain stepped up to the altar of the war and placed on it all their hard-won rules and rights and privileges, all their 'restrictions' on 'output' and on 'employment.' . . .

In thousands of factories all over Great Britain ' there was 4 revolutkin in methods of production."

But the now revolution is in the hand* of Labour, for Labour has obtained a pledge from Parliament in fie Munitions Act which cannot be misunderstood or disregarded. The words of the Treasury Agreement made between the Prime Minister and the Labour representatives in March, 1915, are incorporated in the Act, and they run as follows : —" Any departure during the war from the practices ruling in our workshops, shipyards, ra:(d other industries prior to the war shall be only for the period of the war.'' " In other words," as Mr. Hard explains, "everything must be put back just ns it was before, back into the old slough of slackness, as far as Labour i* concerned, if Labor.r says so."

MODEL OF A WORLD-STATE. In the meantime Labour is silent and makes no proposal, and so, despite the fact that England to compete must be efficient, we rre faced with the possibility that after the war has ended Capital may he bound by the Govoimment's pledge and required to hand over to Labour its pound of flesh. But Mr. Hard pictures- an ideal compromise. He conceives that Labour might say in effect: " Very well. We will modify, we will abandon old habits. We will accept new arrangements for increased cutput. We will put our backs into our jolts. It will he a case of Britons all. But you will have to take up into a genuine joint-control of wages, hour-, and other venditions. Trade unionists will have to sit on boards of directors." Mr. Third's b-t change, as) he puts it, "reaches out to both .sidel of the Equator and into both hemispheres to give the whole world intimately a. new spectacle and a new example. The war lias presented the British Empire with the opportunity of making the world's first great experiment in international government." Tic overseas soldiers of the Empire have made a. deep impression on him. lie .ees in them different people, "not hostile, much friendlier than really foreign nation- c .uld ever he to one another—and vet essentially and permanently different. " He differentiates between the "democratic" Australians. the "eon-ervative" and "cipitalistic" Canadians, "more like the Americans.- 1 th<' "di mocratic" but more "disciplined" New Zealanders, the South Africans who use tin- Dutch language in London and in their official Stale ilu -uiiieiH-. !i "double-languaged,

(louble-b'o'ided, deuble-clinra'-.'teroil n tion," as be calls' them.

The problem, a<oon:,ng to Mr. Hard, i that each of the live nations wi 'lies to be independent . Nevertheless each wants an Imperial foreign policv for war and peai e. and that Imperial foreign |. s .;if-y cannot l>e left to lint-

i.ip ril lie. Therel'i l'e, to prevent Se ex-ions and a r.-jx-t il ion of the Colonial War of l«l? ''l M st he il lie'" iini"il. an I inneri I "•iriiament. an In- («• ViiiiMt.il < : n< ■!•■ n at. "In other

v. rd.s "he write the tiling ill view might" l.i 1 ailed a 'lm tcb or aTiiodel foi

:■ final 'World- I -te.' " And he slecs in thi- la •( eliai'" ■ in P.riti-h life the i-roi'oiindest wor!' eliange wrought by thv war.