I was convinced that the general strike had no revolutionary purpose and that it was not designed to overthrow our institutions, although if persever… - David Lloyd George

There we have witnessed a spectacle of organised assassination, of the most cowardly character. Firing at men who were unsuspecting, firing from men who were dressed in the garb of peaceable citizens, and who are treated as such by the officers of the law; firing from behind—cowardly murder. Unless I am mistaken, by the steps we have taken we have murder by the throat.

A paralysis of will seemed to have seized the Government. Whatever the subject, it was impossible to get a move on. I am not sure that this palsy did not account for the unanimity of the Cabinet on the question of rejecting overtures for Peace. These would have meant action. The pacifist element were easily persuaded to do nothing. The Government was getting into that nervous condition where they could neither wage war nor negotiate peace.

Who is it who is responsible for the scheme of things whereby one man is engaged through life in grinding labour to win a bare and precarious subsistence for himself, and when, at the end of his days, he claims at the hands of the community he served a poor pension of eightpence a day, he can only get it through a revolution, and another man who does not toil receives every hour of the day, every hour of the night, whilst he slumbers, more than his poor neighbour receives in a whole year of toil? Where did the table of that law come from? Whose finger inscribed it? These are the questions that will be asked. The answers are charged with peril for the order of things the Peers represent; but they are fraught with rare and refreshing fruit for the parched lips of the multitude who have been treading the dusty road along which the people have marched through the dark ages which are now merging into the light.