WAR MEMOIRS OF DAVID LLOYD GEORGE 1917

192 WAR MEMOIRS OF DAVID LLOYD GEORGE
else unless the employer gave him such a certificate, consenting
to his leaving; if he left without this, no one else
could employ him for six weeks. "Workmen have been tied
up to particular factories and have been unable to obtain
wages in relation to their skill. In many cases the skilled
man's wage is less than the wage of the unskilled." The
leaving certificate had been adopted to deal with a special
emergency. It had already served its purpose. When conscription
had been brought into force for the Army, there
was no further need for the leaving certificate, and the Government
had already decided to abolish it. Complaint was
also made that the conditions laid down by the Munitions
of War Acts in regard to the introduction of dilution and
the altering of working conditions were not being observed
by some employers, who played fast and loose with the
regulations, and failed to consult their workers as they were
required by the law to do, when making such arrangements.
A third general grievance was the way in which the
Military Service Acts were being operated. It illustrates the
difficulties which a country not accustomed to universal
military training is bound to experience in war. It was of
course inevitable that as the demand for recruits grew, men
previously exempted by virtue of their occupation should be
called up. At one time all the men engaged in certain essential
forms of work such as munitions, shipbuilding, mining, railways
and agriculture had been exempt. When it became
necessary to claim some of the younger men for the army,
taking them from safe and well-paid jobs in which they
had thought themselves to be secure for the duration of the
War, to the dangers and discomforts of the trenches, they
were not only disgruntled; they felt that a kind of government
promise was being broken.
The annoyance caused by the necessity of calling up some
of the young, fit men engaged in the less skilled operations