essential reason whatever why food and fuel in Great Britain should be
considerably dearer than they are under peace conditions. Just the same
home areas are under cultivation, just the same foreign resources are
available; indeed, more foreign supplies are available because we have
intercepted those that under normal conditions would have gone to
Germany. The submarine blockade of Britain is now a negligible factor in
this question.

Despite these patent conditions there has been, and is, a steady
increase in the cost of provisions, coal, and every sort of necessity.
This increase means an increase in the cost of production of many
commodities, and so contributes again to the general scarcity. This is
the domestic aspect of a difficulty that has also its military side. It
is not sufficient merely to make munitions; they must also be delivered,
Great Britain is suffering very seriously from congestion of the
railways. She suffers both in social and military efficiency, and she is
so suffering because her railways, instead of being planned as one great
and simple national distributing system, have grown up under conditions
of clumsy, dividend-seeking competition.

Each great railway company and combination has worked its own areas, and
made difficulties and aggressions at the boundaries of its sphere of
influence; here are inconvenient junctions and here unnecessary
duplications; nearly all the companies come into London, each taking up
its own area of expensive land for goods yards, sidings, shunting
grounds, and each regardless of any proper correlation with the other;
great areas of the County of London are covered with their idle trucks
and their separate coal stores; in many provincial towns you will find
two or even three railway stations at opposite ends of the town; the
streets are blocked by the vans and trolleys of the several companies