Reborn and become a Great Scientist

Chapter 237 185 Royal College of Surgeons

If you want to say that Chen Muwu is lucky, he caught up with a general strike.

If you want to say that Chen Muwu was unlucky, he became a witness to the largest strike in British history.

The root cause of the strike is, of course, the class conflict between mine owners and workers.

But the direct reason is that various factors come together.

Britain is the birthplace of the first industrial revolution, and more than 150 years have passed since then.

In the age of steam, people used coal to drive steam engines.

In the electrical age, people used the method of burning coal to generate electricity.

Even if God rewards food, the small island country of Britain has been endowed with sufficient coal resources.

However, after more than 150 years of mining, the coal that is easier to obtain in the shallow layers of the coal mine has basically been mined to the same extent.

Although there are still a large amount of coal resources under the shallow layer, it is much more difficult to mine, and the coal production in the UK has been declining year by year.

When World War I started, the British war machine was running at full speed, and factories across the country were at full capacity, and British coal was mainly supplied to the country.

Coupled with the impassability of sea routes caused by the war, the export volume of coal has been greatly reduced, which further stimulated the development of coal industry in other countries.

Although coal production in the UK is decreasing year by year, overall, the supply exceeds demand.

After the war, domestic demand for coal declined. Britain wanted to continue exporting surplus coal in exchange for money, but found that the United States, Germany, and even Poland had become coal powerhouses. No one bought their own coal.

"The house leaks happen to rain overnight." In order to save Germany's economy, the United States came up with one of the Dawes plans, which allowed Germany to repay the war reparations of France and Italy by exporting free coal, which further lowered the The price of coal in Europe.

Churchill, the chancellor of the exchequer who said "it is our duty to recast with glory", insisted on restoring the pound to the gold standard, making the pound too strong with an inflated exchange rate, and it was not conducive to British commodity exports.

All kinds of factors are added together, and the British coal mine owners find that their profits have suddenly become lower?

If the profit becomes lower, it can only squeeze the coal miners.

Not only should their wages be reduced, but their working hours should also be extended.

This matter became more and more troublesome, and finally it went directly to the British government.

There were see-saw negotiations between the trade union federation and the British government until May 1926, 5, International Labor Day, when negotiations broke down and the strike finally began.

Among the main strikers, in addition to the unfairly treated coal miners, there are also workers from other industries who support and sympathize with the coal miners.

It stands to reason that the impact of this strike on Cambridgeshire, an academic city that is neither a mining city nor an industrial city, should be quite small.

The only inconvenience may be that traffic will be affected by the strike.

But it was precisely this point that was caught up by the unlucky Chen Muwu.

Chen Muwu, Cockcroft, and the truck that Chadwick found did not get the custom-made accelerator parts.

After returning to Cambridge University, Chen Muwu could only finish the thesis on path points while listening to various people around him talking about the news of the general strike.

Poor traffic and interruption of postal routes also affected the transportation of newspapers.

Now Cambridge University can't even receive the "Times" and "Daily Mail".

Of course, because the printing workers were also part of the strike in solidarity with the coal miners, even the pages and print runs of the two largest newspapers in Britain did not escape the fate of the strike during the strike.

But there are always people in the know, Cambridge is not far from London, only fifty miles.

If you take a car, it only takes two or three hours.

Fifty miles was nothing, even to Eddington, a great cyclist.

The modified bicycle given to him by Chen Muwu made Eddington even more powerful.

Let him ride a bicycle from Cambridge to London and back in one day.

From the most primitive way of dissemination of information - word of mouth, Chen Muwu probably learned about the specific attitudes of various parties in the UK during the strike.

King George V of the United Kingdom stood up and called on the workers to end the strike as soon as possible and return to their jobs.

Prime Minister Baldwin is also thinking about how to resolve the strike peacefully and quickly.

Wherever there are crowds, there are left, middle and right.

In the Conservative Party, there are moderates and hardliners.

The representative of the hardliners was Churchill, the chancellor of the exchequer who did not know that he was also a part of the cause of the strike.

He felt that Prime Minister Baldwin was a bit too rational, so he might as well send soldiers directly.

As the largest opposition party, the Labor Party is also not monolithic.

Within the Labor Party, which has the word "工" in its name, there are naturally some people who support the workers to safeguard their own interests.

But there was another section, much larger, who feared that the strike might damage the party's reputation by linking them with Soviet communists who supported the strike.

After all, a large part of the reason for the downfall of the MacDonald cabinet was the letter from Zinoviev, which made the British think that the Labor Party was the British agent of the Communist International.

They are now overcorrecting and do not want to have the slightest connection with the Sulian people, and they are even more afraid that among the workers on strike this time, there will really be a few real revolutionaries, which will make Britain follow the old path of Tsarist Russia.

At that time, the red flag fluttered on Buckingham Palace, George V's family was executed, and the House of Lords and House of Commons were dissolved.

Without the parliament, where are the ruling parties and opposition parties?Doesn't the Labor Party have no future?

Therefore, most people in the Labor Party still have deep resistance to this strike.

Cambridgeshire, the academic city, was once again involved in this matter.

As the top university in the UK, the University of Cambridge not only produces countless world-renowned scientists, but also cultivates generations of politicians for the UK.

Those conservative students who agree with the British government and hope that the strike will end as soon as possible can't help much and can only wait and see.

And those students who were influenced and inspired by the Red Sulian and stood on the side of the workers used various methods to support the workers.

Rutherford, who is not very interested in political topics, issued a death order in the Cavendish laboratory. Everyone should concentrate on the experiment. No one can talk about this matter in the laboratory, let alone criticize this matter. Opinions about things.

Although he did not name them, it is known that the director was targeting several people who often talked about communism in the laboratory, including his lover Kapitsa.

In Rutherford's eyes, Chen Muwu, another beloved student who devoted himself to the particle accelerator, was much cuter than those students who didn't let him worry.

But he didn't know that Chen Muwu was also a member of the most radical secret organization in Cambridge University, the Cambridge Apostolic Society.

There was lively discussion of the strike at the weekly meetings of the Apostolic Society.

Most of the news Chen Muwu learned about the strike came from gatherings.

These apostles not only discussed donating money to the trade union, supporting the coal miners to continue their struggle against the capitalists, but also planned to publish articles in newspapers using their real names or pseudonyms to express solidarity with the strike.

Regarding donating money, no one came to ask Chen Muwu whether to donate or not.

Although in the eyes of Rutherford, Chen Muwu is the richest student in the Cavendish laboratory, so he lobbied him to give up the Maxwell scholarship.

But in the eyes of the gangsters of the Cambridge Apostles, the various bonuses Chen Muwu received, together with the royalties he obtained from the Chen George series, and the shareholder dividends he received from Penguin Publishing, were nothing at all. money.

However, they still asked for Chen Muwu's opinion when they published an article in support of the strike.

To everyone's disappointment, their brother Chen's performance on this matter was as negative as when he participated in the discussion on related topics before.

Some people even began to think in their hearts, whether it was a wrong decision for them to recruit Chen Muwu into the Apostles Club just because of his wisdom, without considering his position.

……

Some are for the strike and some are against it.

In the city of London, some people use their private cars as shared cars to facilitate people's travel.

Some people also saw business opportunities in this strike and organized privately operated buses in an attempt to make a fortune in this basically paralyzed London city.

London, England and Edinburgh, Scotland, the trains connecting these two most important cities in the United Kingdom, also rely on the participation of volunteer drivers to resume operation.

As a result, the fastest steam locomotive in Britain, the "Flying Scotsman", running on the main railway artery, derailed near Newcastle due to damage by strike workers.

In this case, Chen Muwu finished his path integral thesis.

Rutherford did not understand, and did not want to understand, the content of the paper.

He thought it was just because of the strike that the previously ordered generator parts could not be transported to Cambridge by rail, which prevented follow-up work, so Chen Muwu wrote a theoretical paper to pass the time because he was idle and bored.

Rutherford has always believed that this kind of sympathy strike should not last long. Except for the coal miners who are at stake, it will not take long for all walks of life to return to their original state.

His suggestion to Chen Muwu was to ask him to send someone to send the paper to the Royal Society in London after the traffic resumed.

But this good student disagreed with Rutherford's idea, showing an attitude of eagerness to publish the paper.

So Chen Muwu found Kapiza and asked him to drive him from Cambridge to London.

Kapitsa, who likes to be lively, has long been tired of being trapped in the state of being isolated from the outside world at Cambridge University, so he is willing to take a trip with his good friends.

In this regard, Rutherford did not raise any objections, but only told the two lovers to go back quickly and pay attention to safety on the road.

In one day, Kapica drove Chen Muwu back and forth a hundred miles.

After returning, everyone felt that Kapitsa, who had gone to London for a trip, seemed to be more excited than before. Everyone talked about the scene of London during the general strike.

After being yelled at by Rutherford's loud voice, he restrained himself a bit.

In London, the editors of "Proceedings of Natural Science" showed no enthusiasm for the long-lost Chen Muwu's paper on theoretical physics.

This is not because they cannot understand the content of the paper, but the editors just feel that even if the supplement is published immediately after receiving the paper, this supplement will be stuck in the printing factory that is also on strike.

The Times and the Daily Mail are still stuck in a state of factual hiatus, despite the drastic downsizing.

During the strike, two new newspapers, the British Gazette and the British Worker, appeared in London to deliver the news.

The British Gazette is a temporary newspaper created by the British government to publicize the government's views. Churchill, the chancellor of the exchequer who once worked as a reporter, was appointed as the editor-in-chief of the newspaper.

The "British Worker" is a counterattack launched by the trade union alliance in response to the "British Gazette" and to boost the morale of the working brothers.

But the arm couldn't twist the thigh after all. In order to prevent the spread of the "Worker's Daily", Churchill used a trick to get rid of the salary. In the name of the British government, he expropriated most of the newsprint of the "Worker's Daily".

The "Worker's Daily" had no choice but to reduce the layout from the previous eight sides to four sides, and still persisted in the struggle.

Also on the same day after the cutback, an article in solidarity with British coal miners appeared in The Worker.

The author of the article did not use a pseudonym. He was the model student who was never thorny in Rutherford's eyes, Chen Muwu.

In the article, Chen Muwu expressed solidarity with these striking workers, and at the same time introduced to them that on the other side of the Eurasian continent, China, their fellow workers have been fighting against the capitalists who enslaved them.

In May of last year, a large number of workers went on strike at the yarn factories in Ghahai and Qingdao.

The behavior of the capitalists in this country is much worse than that of the British mine owners. They shot and killed the striking workers, which aroused public anger in China.

On May 30th, the workers in Lihai went on strike in the public concession, but they were arrested by the concession authorities.

But the Chinese have not bowed to the capitalists, and until now, they still persist in the struggle tenaciously.

Chen Muwu appealed in the newspaper, hoping that the British workers would persevere like their Chinese brothers and never give in to the threats and temptations of the capitalists.

He had asked Kapitsa to drive him to London before, and the submission to the Royal Society was just a cover.

Sending this article is Chen Muwu's real purpose.

He had had the idea from the beginning of the strike.

At the gathering of the Apostle Club, Chen Muwu's thoughts became more mature, but he didn't reveal it to those young masters.

The article he wrote not only supported the strike movement, but also promoted the "May [-]th Movement" a year ago to them through the British people's sympathy for the workers.

Previously regarded as a model of British education and frequently appeared in British newspapers, Chen Muwu is not a household name, but he can be regarded as a public figure with certain influence.

The newspaper that published the article caused a great stir in London.

Although the "Worker's Daily" could not be reprinted because the newsprint was requisitioned.

However, it couldn’t stand the circulation among people. More and more readers knew that Dr. Chen from Cambridge University supported the strike, and also knew what a disgraceful role their native country Daiying played in the May [-]th massacre.

Churchill, who monitored the strike movement through the "Worker's Daily", also read this article by Chen Muwu.

He didn't care about the dirty things that the British government did in China in the article. The report on an old man named Gandhi in India in the "Daily Mail" had been reported for so many years, didn't it make any waves?

Churchill's first priority was still to deal with the strike.

He was just angry. Chen Muwu's article would probably boost the morale of the striking workers and cause him trouble.

In his heart, Churchill had already hated this Chinese who ate inside and outside, and he must teach him a lesson when he finds an opportunity in the future.

Chen Weicheng, the Chargé d'Affaires of the Republic of China in the UK who had just taken office, was very "grateful" for the "assumption gift" from Chen Muwu, and estimated that he would be very busy with this article soon.

But he can't complain yet, because his predecessor Zhu Zhaoxin specifically told himself before he went to Italy to take up his post that as long as he serves the most famous Chinese in the world well, then promotion and fortune will not be a problem in the future, and he is the best example.

The embassy in the UK held an emergency meeting overnight to discuss countermeasures against this article "smearing" Daben Empire published by Chen Muwu.

The Sulian embassy in the UK sent a secret report to the country.

At the Royal College of Surgeons in London, a Scotsman from Canada, Henry Norman Bethune, also read Chen Muwu's article in the "Worker".

(End of this chapter)