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industrial system,-a state of dissatisfaction now largely restrained by the patriotic motive and the pressure of the war, but which will almost certainly break forth with enhanced vigour and cause much trouble when that pressure is removed. When peace between the nations is restored, every ounce of our national strength and resource will be required for the vast work of reconstruction and recuperation. This work will need good-will and co-operation between the various classes of the community. But unless we learn wisdom in time, and unless serious efforts are immediately made to establish better relations between Capital and Labour, instead of good-will and co-operation we shall certainly have economic warfare of a most bitter and uncom- promising character. This must be evident to every close observer of the undercurrents of the labour world at present. Hence the importance of this Report, with its searching inquiry into the causes of the unrest and its far-reaching suggestions of remedies, and dealing as it does with an area which includes the South Wales coalfield, admittedly the storm-centre of labour troubles. The Com- missioners are evidently conscious of the fact that no mere tinkering with this problem will do that no temporary remedies which act as mere palliatives and do not grapple with the root-difficulties will suffice. What is wrong with things? What is at the bottom of all the trouble? Why this pervasive dissatisfaction which is potently leavening the whole lump of the labour world ? There are in this Report a mass of facts and suggestions which help us to answer this question. But what is at the root of it all ? It seems to us that it is at bottom the protest of personality against mechanism. Human per- sonality instinctively craves for free self-expression and healthy self-expansion. But modern indus- trialism (and still more so militarism) tends to con- vert men into machines. The sole motive of commercial industrialism is dividends, profits. It degrades men into hands." It subordinates them to the one all-controlling purpose of turning out goods that will bring profit to the owners, and is not at all dominated by the purpose of turning out souls able to rejoice in the beauty of the world and in the mental and moral resources of life. Who can con- template the hideous ugliness of the mining valleys of Glamorganshire and Monmouthshire, with their huge coal-tips, unsightly surface buildings connected with the mines, their long rows of dull, monotonous, insanitary houses, so featureless and lacking in individuality, not to say cramped and unwholesome, who can survey the whole environment so devoid of those amenities which lend beauty and dignity to human life, without a feeling of silent revolt against the blind perversity and depravity of it all? The whole system may be effective in turning out profits for the capitalist and even high wages for many of the workers but it also succeeds in turning out workers whose soul is full of bitter complaints against the system which reduces them into cogs in the wheel of the huge, soul-less industrial machine. If man and not profit was the end in view, such un- wholesome ugliness would not be allowed to disfigure the face of God's fair earth, and to lower the tone of human life. Now, if our contention is correct that the underlying meaning of labour unrest is, the protest of human nature against the over- mechanisation of life, it follows that the only adequate remedy is the humanisation of industrialism. It is in a broad human spirit that the whole problem should be approached, and very much depends on the right method of approach. And there is nothing we admire more in this Report than the fine human spirit which informs and inspires it from beginning to end. We have neither the space nor the necessary first-hand knowledge to deal with the details of this Report, or to critically examine the mass of informa- tion it contains. But we may be allowed just to underline some of the points that are scattered over its pages, and to offer a few comments on them. (1) The Report rightly lays its fingers on pro- fiteering," or at any rate the suspicion of pro- fiteering," as the chief immediate cause of unrest during the period of the War. There prevails a widely-spread suspicion that employers of labour have been exploiting the national crisis for personal gain (pp. 21, 23, 33f.). It is easy to be wise after the event," but on all grounds of humanity and reason the Government should have ruthlessly prevented profiteering, so far as possible, from the very outbreak of the War. The crime of turning human blood into filthy lucre should have been severely checked from the beginning. It was not enough to tax excess profits. "The imposition of this tax instead of the prohibition of all war profits is regarded as tantamount to the Govern- ment's connivance with profiteering." And surely the recommendation of the Commissioners that all excess profits should henceforth be appropriated by the Government, so that the incentive to charge inflated prices be removed, is perfectly iust and sound. (2) Due emphasis is laid on the improvement of housing conditions, and of the conditions of the workers at their employment (pp. 32, 33). There