WAR MEMOIRS OF DAVID LLOYD GEORGE 1917

STOCKHOLM AND MR. ARTHUR HENDERSON 133
tions of peace, had been unloosed. Men, torn from their
homes, from their work, from all the training and habits of a
lifetime, were being thrown together with strange companions
from unfamiliar social orbits to be trained to destroy,
or set to new tasks of munition manufacture or departmental
duty. Women and girls were being emancipated at a stroke
from the hobble skirts and chaperonage of the pre-War era,
and sent forth, often in man's attire, to do work hitherto
reserved for men only. The Government was perforce taking
powers over men's lives, properties and businesses on an unprecedented
scale. It was dictating as to wages, rates of
profit, and the use to which industrial machinery and organisation
were to be put. The break with the past seemed
final, and every political theorist was stimulated to speculate
what shape the new order could or should assume. So when
Russia suddenly flung away her ancient Czarist regime,
and embarked on a great Socialist experiment, numbers in
this country were eager to emulate her example. That the
movement of liberation which Russia was then beginning
with such hopes and amid such an atmosphere of good wishes
would rush headlong into the Red Terror, and complete the
upheaval and uprooting of the existing social and economic
order, was not then foreseen.
As the year 1917 advanced, therefore, we were faced,
in addition to our darkening war anxieties, with the necessity
of handling with a wise admixture of firmness and moderation
the domestic situation that arose from industrial and
political unrest, aggravated to an acute degree by the forces
released through the Russian upheaval. The shock that came
from Petrograd passed through every workshop and mine,
and produced a nervous disquiet which made things difficult
in recruitment and munitionment. To maintain our national
unity and pursue steadily our national purpose, it was vital
that the members of the Government should keep their heads