most urgent need of every ship it can get, and the deliberate transfer
to America of a number of British businesses to evade paying a proper
share of the national bill in taxation. The English who have gone to
America at different times have been of very different qualities; at the
head of the list are the English who went over in the _Mayflower_; at
the bottom will be the rich accessions of this war....

And perhaps a still more impressive testimony to the rottenness of these
"business men," upon whom certain eccentric voices call so amazingly to
come and govern us, is the incurable distrust they have sown in the
minds of labour. Never was an atmosphere of discipline more lamentable
than that which has grown up in the factories, workshops, and great
privately owned public services of America and Western Europe. The men,
it is evident, _expect_ to be robbed and cheated at every turn. I can
only explain their state of mind by supposing that they have been robbed
and cheated. Their scorn and contempt for their employees' good faith
is limitless. Their _morale_ is undermined by an invincible distrust.

It is no good for Mr. Lloyd George to attempt to cure the gathered ill
of a century with half an hour or so of eloquence. When Great Britain,
in her supreme need, turns to the workmen she has trained in the ways of
individualism for a century, she reaps the harvest individualism has
sown. She has to fight with that handicap. Every regulation for the
rapid mobilisation of labour is scrutinised to find the trick in it.

And they find the trick in it as often as not. Smart individualistic
"business experience" has been at the draughtsman's elbow. A man in an
individualistic system does not escape from class ideas and prejudices
by becoming an official. There is profound and bitter wisdom in the deep
distrust felt by British labour for both military and industrial