WE MAY be quite sure that not without good reason the Munitions Minister asked the workers to forgo their Whitsuntide holiday. All through the industrial area of the North, Whitsun Week is normally given up to recreation and junketing, and to lay a finger on this firmly established institution needed the exercise of considerable courage. But the experience of the recent Easter holiday, which extended itself to a whole week of idleness, convinced Mr Lloyd George that it would be fatal to suffer such a state of things to be repeated. It meant the delay by a whole week in the delivery of munitions to the Front, and a seriously restricted output. Expressed in different terms, it meant the sacrifice of many brave lives. The workers’ representatives, we are glad to see, when the grievious consequences of a suspension of munition work was pointed out to them, cheerfully consented to the postponement of the holiday till a time when it may be possible to grant it. For the sake of the munition workers, however, we wish that the holiday could have been suspended throughout the country. It will be rather hard upon them to see their friends merrymaking in idleness while they have to continue their labours. Besides, it would have done us all good if we had been made to share with the latter in the disappointment they will feel at losing their accustomed holiday, and we doubt whether anyone would have murmured if the Government had ordered the suspension of the Whitsuntide Bank Monday.