Llais Llafur

South Wales travellers will be well ttrI. vised to note that the night boat train to Fishguard has been concelled.

0. II. M. S. I (By Birks). A barrack room- containing 30 soldiers is a house of entertainment, an education in itself. Especially is this so at the present time, when so many Reservists have been drawn to- gether from the four quarters of the Kingdom. The Irish brogue and the Scotch accent are the predominant phonetics in our particular room. We have amongst us colliers from the Scottish ooalfield. and from Durham, a 'bus driver from Camber well, a mortuary attendant from Woolwich, several ships' nurses, a platelayer from a country place in Essex, a crane driver from Norwich, a shop assistant from Southampton a steelworker from the Midlands, a Hector's son from Devonshire, and several regular R.A.M.C. men. On the whole we are a happy lot, despite the fact. that most of us suffer from a peculiar state of embarrassment produced through the lack of "stivers." One third of us are married men, and the remainder may be; but don't admit it. The language of the barrack room is something unlike anything met with in civilian life. With the absence of that gentle influence which the pre- senee of women would exert, there is no false modesty in the expression of views and opinions. Pygmalionese sinks into mildness compared with Barrack- ese! Opportunity to indulge in this l-ecular tipe of expressive language was furnished yesterday when we were ordered to attend at the Med 1 In- spection Room and report ou.-< r, e. for inoculation against enteric. » Twenty eight of us did not conceal our repugnance to this operation and, prior to parage, expressed our deter- mination to enter an emphatic protest. On arrival at the hospital the grumb- ling was long and loud and, through one of the non.-corns, the Major com- manding the Co., numbering about 100 strong, heard of it. Before coming to us, as we lay on the grass in front of the operating room, he stripped off his tunic, raised the left a.rm sleeve of his shirt, walked into the operating room and came out with his arm marked with tincture of iodine and a slight red puncture showing in the middle of it. He rolled down his sleeves and then came across to us and addressed us thus wise: "What's the matter wid you men, anyway? Here I am doing all I can to make things comfortable for ye, and ye refuse to do me a person: favour like this. Do ve Lnow what enteric is? I do. I had it in Pre- toria, and I tell ye men I would sooner be stuck wid a German bayonet than go through a damned attack of enteric again." "Yes sir, replied one of the Reserv- ists, but what good will it do us in civilian life?" "An' sure," replied the Major, "if ye are struck down wid enteric ye will stand very, little chance of getting back to civilian life. I am going to take ye men out, and I want to bring ye all back again." "But we are not all agreed, sir, that the introduction of a toxic poison n our blood will be a safeguard!" said another. "And what is your trade?" asked the Major. He was informed, "Well, do you think I oould tache you any- thing about your profession? I ask ye, men, as a personal favour to under- go this." Well, sir, if you put it in that way we cannot refuse," and straightaway we walked towards the room like sheep to the slaughter-house. The operation was not a long one, and the I whole company were inocluated in less than an hour. The operation con- sists in having an injection of anti- typhoid vaccine, about 2 c.c.s., which is injected into the skin over the bicep muscle of the left arm by means of a hypodermic syringe. The operation in itself is simple—it is the subsequent state of the person operated upon that excited—and rightly so—our appre- hensions. Less than an hour after we reached barracks half a dozen or so of the men in our room were fe?ling decidely "dicky." The lymph- atic glands under the arm began to feel as if they were being prodded with red hot knitting needles charged with electricity. Our heads hummed, and altogether we were some sick. Our condition became worse towards night, and although several decided that the better course would be to drown their trouble at the canteen, we all "went through the mill." The groans and grinding of teeth of the sleeping men and the uneasy turnings of those who could not go to sleep because of the fearful pains in their left arm sug- gested that few were happy, even in their sleep. Just before "lights out" there was the usual reading of the Comminition Service taken part in by everyone pre- sent and anti-toxin was voted a sanguinary (and other adjectival) nuisance, worse than enteric itself. Yet we would willingly have under- gone the operation once a day for a week in order to show that we were capable of being cajoled by a good- hearted officer--und a gentleman. The cooking of Army rations by the regimental cooks leaves much to be desired, and it is a true and trite say- ing that Army cooks spoil everything they touch. There are exceptions, but I have not had the pleasure of patron- ising one as yet. < The inrush of so many Reservists has caused a congestion which is reflected in the serving out of only one blanket per man, with the "donkey's break- fast," otherwise barrack mattresses. The sensation of rising from the floor in the morning is well illustrated by the entries in the diary of a non-com., which read: Tuesday: "Floor exceptionally hard —have discovered several fresh pro- tuberances on the innominate bone." Wednesday: "No improvement in sleeping accommodation—feathers are too long." Thursday: "Found a little lees dis- comfort b sleeping on my kit, but the boards are as hard as ever." Thursday: It's no use grumbling- we are on active service." < » "Made your will yet. Jerry?" asked the Camberwell busman of the Essex platelayer. "Naw, I ain't got nothin' to leave, and the Old Dutch will get what there M. "Will be — exclaims another. "W e shall be back home in three months." And we all hope so. But we hae oor doots. < The barrack room tables are occu- pied the greater part of our spare time in "writing home," and many silent tears fall on the paper as we write. It is not that we are chicken-hearted— but we are human. The tear glistens in the eye one moment, and the next it disappears, but a phrase. a memory brings it back again. None of us would admit it-we are gradually getting steeled but, hang it, there's the faoe of the kiddie before us as we write. Well, if the present trouble results in what Tennyson expressed: "ring(ing) out the thousand wars of old, ring(ing) in the thousand years of peace," it is the dear ones we are leaving behind us who will derive the benefit. < » < The spirit and enthusiasm of every man in the camp to be off to the front is shown by the eager anxiety to hear when we are to go. The officers are under orders which are kept from the rank and file, but our previous ex- perience in approaching "newsy" people in the Swansea Valley with "anything doin"' has stood us in good stead.

THE WORKING WOMAN IN POLITICS. The War and Working Women. By Dr. Marion Phillips, Geneval Secre- tary, Women's Labour League. Among women of all classes, but especially among working women, the outbreak of war in Europe completely overshadows every other question. It has brought them face to iace, as no ex- perience of ordinary daily life could ever do, with the weak ness and the wicltednesB of the ideas which underlie our existing civilisation. It haa brought home to them the importance of the part they will henceforth have to play in building up, when this pre- sent ghastly conflict is over, a san? and healthy .society in which war and iz. policies from which ,war springs will be impossible. No woman wants war. No essential interest of their is served by it. They are involved in the fighting now going on all over Europe only as victims, the bearers of the heaviest burdens. Women pay the first and last cost of the war in every sense as losers and suf- ferers, never as victors. For them ita glories are utterly barren. They have been dragged into this war, thrust into the first rank of the fighting line, not merely because they are voteless and practically voiceloso-the great mass of men, too, have had no hand in making the quarrel which is now being fought out—but because the whole structure of our society is founded upon false no- tions of the relations between men and women, upon women's subordination and submission economically as well as politically; and because the governing classes in every country have never been forced to realise "fhat war means to women, how women pay for it, and the nature of the sacrifice it egtails upon the workers of all lands. IF WOMEN HAD VOTES. It is quite true that if we women had had votes we could not have prevented this general conflagration in the Old World, save in so far as the whole atmosphere of politics might have been changed. The millions of men voters have not been able to prevent it. It has bonie in spite of the united pro- test of men and women. We have taken our share in the demonstrations which have been organised, and have protested as vehemently and passionately as our men comrades have done. In the teeth of a determined opposition such as England has never before wit- nessed war has broken out. Working women, certainly bore their share in the earlier campaign against militarism and armaments organised, by the Labour movement. Neither the prolonged cam- paign nor this present protest, under the very shadow of war was a men's war felt by working men and working women alike. If those impressive and pro- foundly earnest demonstrations have failed to avert the frightful calamity which is now upon us it is not because we working women have been indff^ -er/t or half-hearted in our opposition. RESULT OF SECRET FOREIGN I POLICY. Why then have the nations blundered I into war ? It is because no country, not ) even England is yet genuinely demo- I cratic. The control of international lations, the making of treaties, the vheJe diplomatic apparatus and the ar.>v;-d forces of States are not under the con- trol of democracy. Foreign policy is secret and fundamentally irresponsible, and is vested in the hands of small, jealously guarded groups, every memoer of which is saturated with class preju- dice and has been rendered by educa- tion and training incapable of under- standing or sympathising with the movement of democratic thought and feeling. It is not'the nations which are at war it ia these small groups, and the finan- ciers who stand in with them. ,They have made the war, though even they vjill speedily learn, if they have not al- ready realised, that making war they have struck the death-blow at their own power and privilege. This war is the consequent of the bargaining, and treaty-making which has gone on behind the scenes, out of reach of public opinion, oanceaied from the public gaze. Through that bargaining and treaty- making England is now at war with Germany, the one nation in Europe which stands nearest to us in kinship and sentiment and whose interests are identical with ours; we are fighting side by side with France and Belgium in support of the Russian nation w hose his- tory is one long record of black tyranny and oppression; England, the mother of free institutions, because we have per- mitted our diplomatists and politicians to enter into obligations the meaning and oonseqquencies of which were con- cealed from us, is now allied with Rus- sian Tsardom, the vilest and most monstrous despotism that has ever dark- ened the sun, which has never known the meaning of honour, or mercy, or justice, or freedom. MUST URGE FOR PEACE. I We feel deep sympathy with the peo- ple of all the European lands engaged in this terrible struggle—and we give our admiration fully to Belgium. But we claim that we have not saved her neutrality, and we had already under- taken to help France when we were asked for diplomatic help by Belgium. More than that can we save the small nationalities of Europe, when our victory means the victory of Russia, the op- pressor of the Finnish, and the Polish, and the Caucasian nationalities, and the nation which we helped in killing Per- sian independence? We shall not cease to urge peace while the war goes on, though we shall take what steps we must to mitigate its hor- rors and when peace is restored our task will lie plain before us. It will not be the same Europe, it will not' be the same England; things will never be the same again for any man or woman in the Old World. All our problems will have altered, perhaps most of our methods will have to be changed. But our duty and responsibility will be clearer than ever they have been be- fore we have to make war impossible by making democracy a reality, by deep- ening the consciousness in ourselves of international solidarity, by drawing the bonds tighter between working men and women of other countries, by wresting the control of foreign policy from the hands of the classes which now exercise it, by destroying the power of the Jingo Press to inflame and madden our people, by breaking up the armament rings, by organising the forces of labour to pre- vent capital ism ever dominating ua again. We shall do it all in a new at- mosphere when the evil passions now working in the nations are sated and exhausted and before the money-power, now crippled and all but destroyed, can recover. In our defeat we shall be victorious, for the anti-social ÎOl"cftI will then have reached their climax and have done their worst. THE IMMEDIATE TASK. I Meanwhile we have an immediate task in hand, and this is our opportunity of working for the better time. We have to bend all our energies to helping our people to bear the stress of the desper- ate situation into which they have been plunged. Wherever the Labour movement makes its voice heard for peace, wherever wo- men's organisations utter their protests against the slaughter of Europe's workers, we shall be ready to join in the protests. But we shall also be at our posts, helping forward the nation's ef- forts to feed the hungry, care for the sick, employ the workless. We are with the "thole of organised Labour, ready to do our utmost to keep panic, down, to restrain the greed of the trust- builder who seeks to store food for them- selves and help create scarcity for others. Everywhere, in every corner of our country, there is work for women, the protector of life, while the slaughter of Europe goes on. And when the slaughter ends, there will be need of brave women to build the new world for which our hearts are longing and which warms us with hope.

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International Labour and the War Jingo Journal's Cheap Sneer 40 44 FAILURE OF INTERNATIONAL SOCIALISM" WHAT OF ORGANISED CHRISTIANITY? The Times" has been -executing a war-dance over what it imagines to be the prostrate body of international Labour. The French Socialists, the powerful German Social Democratic Party, and our own I .Labour Party, the organ of Tory Capitalism seems to think, have been as powerless to affect the current of events in Europe during the past month as -thistledown to influence the direction of the wind. To a certain extent The Times" is right. Socia'ism has been felled by the mailed fist. But it is not only Socialism that has been temporarily dis- abled. Every moral and spiritual force in Europe is impotent. Organised Christ- ianity, a far greater, older, and more powerful force than Socialism, has to stand by while the professional homi- cide* are carrying out their grim tasks. The Prince of .Peace is forgotten it is the God of Battles who is now elevated. The Russians, the Germans, the Austrians, the Belgians, the French, the British, are all calling upon God to bless their arms, an ironic circumstance which gives the enemies of Christianity opportunity for biting com- ment. It is not only Socialism that is power- less in the present crisis. Christianity has failed. Finance and commerce have failed. People of pacific in- tentions, who, we are convinced, are the majority in both Ger- many and Great Britain, have failed. Every force which dis- courages war is for the moment at a discount. The reason for the paralysis of the peace movements, and the dominance of the war- mongers, is not far to seek. In none of the eight nations now at war does the democracy rule. In the British meaning of the term, there is no organ- ised working-class movement in Russia and the Balkan States. Despite the rigid Ger- man censorship, we know now that the German Socialists have been cowed into silence and inactivity by the sabre and machine-gun. The right of public meeting in Germany has been suspended, the Socialist clubs have been compulsorily closed, and even the Socialist reading circles have been for- cibly disbanded by the German War Lords. In France and Belgium, the Socialists have been compelled temporarily to throw in their lot with the ruling classes, because the suc- cess of the militarists of Germany would retard for generations all hope of peace- ful progress. Unless a people can preserve its own national entity, there is no hope of social developments. The Times" and other critics of the International Socialist movement, do not seem to realise that the Social- ist attitude to War in that phase of it which concerns international action, has never proceeded beyond the stage of academic discussion. The general strike as a means of preventing war h.is only been imperfectly can- vassed, and in any case. the general strike is not a Socialist weapon. Socialists aim par- ticularly at political power, and when that is achieved, the days of European wars will be gone forever. Socialism as a serious force in the polity of nations is not yet fifty years old. Militarism is as old as the human race. Those who expect Socialism, at the present stage of human development, to be strong enough to quash militarism, display a singular lack of his- torical sense. That time will come. To the prevention of war we shall see as much human skill, foresight, and in- genuity applied, as we see now in the military campaigns of Franca and Germany, and in the naval campaign of Great Britain. At this moment the War Lords are in the ascendancy. But even in the hour of their apparent triumph forces are growing and maturing that will depose them as surely as that to-morrow's sun will rise. In the hour of its ex- tremity the capitalist state has to apply Socialist principles with respect to finance, insurance, organ- isation of employment, and the food supply. Social- ism is the remedy for internal disorganisation as it is for international disorganisation. War, the reign of brute force and barbarous instincts, must ultimately yield to reason, right, and justice. Socialists have no fears as to thejiltimate triumph of Socialism.

TIMBER FOR COLLIERIES FURTHER GENEROUS OFFERS. I The English Forestry Association wish it to be known that they will do everything possible to organise sup- plies of native timber and forest pro- duce from the various districts in the British Isles and assist collieries and industries where necessary to obtain timber which they require. The asso- ciation has been for some time taking steps to organise the native supplies for collieries and other purposes, and they possess special facilities for point- ing to the most likely sources of sup- plies. They willingly place all facili- ties and information free of cost for the benefit of consumers or of the tim- her and other trades, and will act as a centre for all inquiries as to native timber. The association invite all those in- terested in the production, sale, con- version ,or consumption of timber to co-operate with them in the present crisis and send particulars as to timber or goods which they wish to purchase or to sell, or stocks of converted or un converted timber which they hold. They will then place buyer and seller in touch with each other, and leave all negotiations to be conducted direct be- tween the parties interested. They wish to emphasise that they are not a trading association, and do not buy or sell tinber or goods or charge com- mission or fees.

WAR NOTES AND NEWS A Boulonge Cemtral News message states that Lord Alfred Douglas has joined the French Army. On the Newcastle Exchange it was- said that there was no improvement in the Newcastle coal market, and that more pits were idle than at any time sice the war began. Beypnd a little French business there was no other- movement in the market. The Hull Fish Merchants' Protection;. Association has decided to forward to the Government a guarantee that they will make no attempt to corner sup- plies, and will not purchase fish to, place in cold stores with the object of enhancing prices. The London Flour Millers' Associa- tion, at a meeting held on Wednesday afternoon, fixed the following prices for town households, 35s. whites, 3s. extra. Manchester Home Traders' Associa- tion, representing the biggest firms in the city, decided to continue work for a fortnight without a reduction of staffs or wages. Birmingham jewellers have decided to close their factories every afternoon, working until mid-day. A committee- has been formed to relieve distress among the work-people. The wholesale hardware trade an- nounce that they are glad to find the general feeling of confidence is being restored, and therefore deprecate any unusual pressure for payment being put upon retail traders who continue to pay their accounts when due. In the House of Assemblv, savs- Reuter's Brisbane correspondent. Mr Barnes, the Treasurer, has introduced a Bill to secure supplies of meat for the Imperial Government during the- war. Mr Barnes explained that large- supplies are available for the Imperial authorities. Mr Fisher was given a walk-over at the Federal election to enable him to assist the Common— wealth in the present crisis. The war has meant a complete dis- location of the herring and white fish- ing industry which contributes largely, to the prosperity of the north-eastern portion of Scotland. About 15,000 workers have been thrown out of em- ployment. The Fishery Board's orders admit of one-day trios, but they will not be taken advantage of as insurance- companies decided to take no risks for' a fortnight. It is all but clear," says Mr. H. W, Massingham, in the "Daily News and Leader," that Germany will be beaten. For that issue we must, I think, tiav,- Deo Gratim." Right Hon. Sir David Brynmor-Jones, K.C., M.P., has been appointed Recorder- of Cardiff, in place of the late Mr. Ben- jamin Francis-Williams, K.C. It is stated that certain German regi- ments, with the idea of deceiving the Belgians, marched under the Belgian flag, and that German regiments, of which King Albert is honorary oolonel, wore Belgian cockades.

CRYNANT MAN'S EXCITING EXPERIENCE ARRESTED IN FRANCE AS SPY. A Crynant man, Mr David Hughes,. B.A., gives a vivid account of his ad- venture during a week's sojourn in France under martial law, after the English declaration of war against Ger- many. Mr Hughes and a friend were- staying at an hotel in Havre, until, wishing for more excitement they went to Montivillier. The rest of the ad- venture is best told in his own words. "At the little town of Montivillier we got out and started walking through the twon in search of a cafe. Before we found one, however, we- found trouble A tap on my arm made me aware of the fact that a "sergeant de ville" was on our track. It was- then that we realised that foreign clothes and foreign speech were iir Montivillier as startling as they were- commonplace in a big town like Havre.- We marched off to the. "Marie" (town hall or police station} followed by a huge rabble, who were- already glorying in the capture of two- German spies. We showed our cards, our railway tickets, our English matches, and even the English mark- inside our hats. We were tried in German, but we managed to look blank. All was going well when his friend winked. This started the cross- examination again. Asked their ad dress they said: "Hotel des Mosquet- aires," instead of "Hotel des Trois Mosquetaires," in consequence of which- it could not be found on the directory. "By the merest chance," Mr Hughea continues, "I remembered the pro- prietor's name. As a matter of fpt, I had only given the name a passing- glance as I left the hotel that day, Levavasseur was well-known, and on the strength of this our 'third degree'' came to an end, and we were given. our paesparts."