of the two areas. I have no doubt it would mean serious loss to
So-and-so, and quite novel and unfair advantage to So-and-so. It would
take years to work the thing and get down to the footing of one water
supply and an ambidextrous dustman on the lines of perfect justice and
satisfactoriness all round.

But what I want to maintain is that these little immediate claims and
rights and vested interests and bits of justice and fairness are no
excuse at all for preventing things being done in the clear, clean,
large, quick way. They never constituted a decent excuse, and now they
excuse waste and delay and inconvenience less than ever. Let us first do
things in the sound way, and then, if we can, let us pet and compensate
any disappointed person who used to profit by their being done
roundabout instead of earning an honest living. We are beginning to
agree that reasonably any man may be asked to die for his country; what
we have to recognise is that any man's proprietorship, interest, claims
or rights may just as properly be called upon to die. Bocking and
Braintree and Mr. John Smith--Mr. John Smith, the ordinary comfortable
man with a stake in the country--have been thinking altogether too much
of the claims and rights and expectations and economies of Bocking and
Braintree and Mr. John Smith. They have to think now in a different
way....

Just consider the work of reconstruction that Great Britain alone will
have to face in the next year or so. (And her task is, if anything, less
than that of any of her antagonists or Allies, except Japan and Italy.)
She has now probably from six to ten million people in the British
Isles, men and women, either engaged directly in warfare or in the
manufacture of munitions or in employments such as transit, nursing, and
so forth, directly subserving these main ends. At least five-sixths of