[The Church Times appeared in a skeleton issue for a second week.]

CARDINAL BOURNE has in a few plain words summarised the position that the Christian must take to the great strike. To break an agreement is a sin. That is the clear and uncomfortable truth. And since it is forbidden to do evil that good may come, the fact, which we do not for one moment doubt, that the men who obeyed the orders of the Trades Union Council and left work without notice, did so to aid the miners to resist wage reductions, is no sufficient justification for their action. . . If the notices had been handed in, the strike would never have taken place. There would have been time for negotiation and consideration, time for the hot heads to cool. And we are regretfully compelled to believe that this is exactly what certain of the trade union leaders wanted to avoid. So far as the majority of the leaders and the great mass of the men are concerned, the strike is not revolutionary in intention. But it is folly not to recognise that there are men of outstanding ability and great influence in the Trade Union Council sitting now in permanent session in Eccleston-square, who desire to establish what is, in effect, Soviet rule in this country. . . . The nation is faced with the deliberate attempt by men more or less affected by the political and economic theories of Moscow to establish what would be not the dictatorship of the proletariat but the dictatorship of half a dozen determined Trade Union officials.