Apr. 8.
WHEN reading of the sinister events connected with the coal strike in Scotland, many will have been struck with one special incident. In their march on the pits, with violence in their minds, the men of Kinross and Lanark were headed by pipers. There is a military element in such doings, or at least it seems so. It is not an ordinary procession of strikers who for their demonstration throughout their town or village have enrolled the local musician to give a fillip to the proceedings. Does it not rather recall the manner in which regiments from these districts went over the top of yore, with their pipers piping them on? In this theory, there is nothing far fetched or grotesque. These mining districts supplied great numbers of fine soldiers to the army during the war, hard cases most of them, for your miner is as tough a character as will be encountered in the British Isles. They have not been through four years of warfare for nothing, for assuredly they have learned the terrible power that can be wielded by organized, trained masses of men, and such knowledge will not be readily forgotten, or, in what they doubtless consider a struggle of life or death, neglected. Over and above this, however, they have been taught something else; for four years they have had inculcated into them what the Army described in an ideal phrase as the spirit of the bayonet.' The Army sought to instil it into a man's very soul, and thanks to the splendid efficiency of the methods employed succeeded. So now, remembering all that happened during the war years, and then noting one or two marked incidents, are we not justified in concluding that in these ugly rushes on the mines, there is a strong survival of the spirit?
Unless the world has been ry much mistaken the charr and temperament of the Scot tend to bear out this argument. His national religion, surely a good guide to his nature, is essentially unemotional, and no charge of hysteria has ever been* brought against the nation at large. On the contrary it has the reputation of being hard-headed, dour and canny, although with a distinct touch of recklessness. These people are not likely to be carried away on an emotional wave, as, rightly or wrongly, the Welsh are said to be liable to be carried. And considering these matters, the organized attacks on the pits must assume a greater significance. Of course violence, when feelings have become embittered in the course of a dispute, is no new thing, and this is nov the first time that pits have been ruined through the deliberate act of the strikers: such occurred years before direct action was ever heard of. To-day, however, the temper of the country has been very largely changed by the events of the past six years. The world has gone through an unparalleled period of.violence, and there is no doubt that when feelings run high, the thoughts of men turn naturally to the force of brute strength. It would indeed be strange if it were otherwise, and that is why we are prone to believe that the instinct created during the war is very much to the fore to-day, and in an essentially dangerous form.
We do not, of course, suggest that the survival of the instinct of battle is confined to the miners alone. It is not: rather is it widespread, and attention is only drawn to it in the case of the miners by the acts of the past few days. Reports from many sources have shown that it is more or less acting through every section of the community. It must be conceded that years of war are not the best training for civilian life. We have already mentioned the spirit of the bayonet as a force still at work, but there is another thing con-
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.