TROOPS TAKE POSSESSION.

The stubbornness of the West Fife miners has brought its inevitable sequel. Marines and military arrived here early this morning and took possession of three pits in the neighbourhood. Under armed protection the firing of the boilers was resumed by members of the management staffs, and by midnight to-night pumping will have been started again. A battalion of Seaforth Highlanders was brought in motor-buses from Stirling, and a big detachment of Marines was drafted in from Rosyth, and possession was taken of the Kirkford and Aitken pits of the Fife Coal Company, and of the Nellie pit at Lochgelly. The soldiers stand on guard at the pit heads, wearing their steel helmets, with fixed bayonets and rifles loaded, and Lewis guns are placed about the pit-head works. The miners, however, are taking the situation philosophically. They stand in groups behind the steel wire which has been laid as a barrier, facetiously described as the “touch line,” and fling gibes at the stolidlooking Highlander who is standing guard. Government action is so far confined to the protection of management staffs or voluntary workers. There is no proposal, so far as I can learn, to introduce naval ratings as stokers, though something of the kind or the importation of voluntary workers from other areas will be necessary if salvage work is to be extended.

Meantime the Fife Coal Company have ten men working at Kirkford and twenty at the Aitken pit, and that exhausts their available man-power as represented by managers, undermanagers, engineers, and oversmen. There were meetings of miners in various districts this morning, when, perhaps because of the advent of the military, a more conciliatory attitude towards pumping was evidenced, and it was agreed to allow an under-manager and an oversman at each pit. According to an agency message, several attempts at train wrecking are reported at Bellshill and Burnbank, in Lanarkshire, where clumps of wood and other obstacles were placed on the railway line. London services terminate at Berwick or Carlisle, on the border, and the traffic is then taken up by the Scottish railways. The English lines were stated to be working without interruption.