tediously handing about goods that could be dealt with at a tenth of the
cost in time and labour at a central clearing-house, did such a thing
exist; and each system has its vast separate staff, unaccustomed to work
with any other staff.

Since the war began the Government has taken over the general direction
of this disarticulated machinery, but no one with eyes who travels about
England now can fail to remark, in the miles and miles of waiting loaded
trucks on every siding, the evidences of mischievous and now almost
insuperable congestion. The trucks of each system that have travelled on
to another still go back, for the most part, _empty_ to their own; and
thousands of privately owned trucks, which carry cargo only one way,
block our sidings. Great Britain wastes men and time to a disastrous
extent in these needless shuntings and handlings.

Here, touching every life in the community, is one instance of the
muddle that arises naturally out of the individualistic method of
letting public services grow up anyhow without a plan, or without any
direction at all except the research for private profit.

A second series of deficiencies that the war has brought to light in the
too individualistic British State is the entire want of connection
between private profit and public welfare. So far as the interests of
the capitalist go it does not matter whether he invests his money at
home or abroad; it does not matter whether his goods are manufactured in
London or Timbuctoo.

But what of the result? At the outbreak of the war Great Britain found
that a score of necessary industries had drifted out of the country,
because it did not "pay" any private person to keep them here. The