Mr. Tillett addressed two labour demonstrations in Wales on Saturday
and Sunday last. Speaking at Treharris he said that the labour movement did not depend absolutely on the leaders, but upon the rank and file. Had it depended on the leaders he would have had a revolution three times a day. There was a mathematical ratio in their strength, because their numbers determined the right. Might determined right in many cases where logic, truth, fair play, and even justice had no claim. The man who was not prepared to 'stake his life in a fight for a living wage was not fit to live. At Llanelly Mr. Tillett made a violent attack on Army officers, after observing that the courage of the so-called Llanelly mob would deter the Liberal Government from such an outrage again. Whenever the soldiers had come out they had been deliberately sent to provoke riot and to murder and shoot down their fellow men. The officers belonged to the capitalistic class, and be did not know of any incident during industrial strife when officers would not have been only too glad to murder working men in order to satisfy their blood- lust and class hate. These words are a foul and atrocious libel upon the officers and men, who showed the utmost for- bearance in performing a necessary but unpleasant duty. We note that even so pronounced a humanitarian as Canon Barnett admits in Monday's Westminster Gazette that "the soldiers had to be employed" and that their steadying presence pre- vented wholesale bloodshed. "Public opinion would then have condemned the strikers and put back, perhaps for a generation, the advance of labour to its rights."
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