engaged on operations which anybody in full
power of his faculties and of the most ordinary capacity can learn to
carry on within a very few hours, if not within a very few minutes.
What occurred in Government departments during the war proved that a
very large percentage of the Men of Business, who somehow found their
way into public employ, were no great catch even if they did manage to
spend a good deal of the taxpayer's money. To draw a sharp
dividing-line between the nation's good bargains and the nation's bad
bargains in this respect would be out of the question. To try to
separate the sheep from the goats would be as invidious as it would be
vain--there were a lot of hybrids. But it was not military men within
the War Office alone who suffered considerable disillusionment on
being brought into contact with the Man of Business in the aggregate;
that was also the experience of the Civil Service in general.

The successful Man of Business has owed his triumphs to aptitude in
capturing the business of other people. Therefore when he blossoms out
as a Government official in charge of a department, he devotes his
principal energies to trying to absorb rival departments. It was a
case of fat kine endeavouring to swallow lean kine, but finding at
times that the lean kine were not so badly nourished after all--and
took a deal of swallowing. And yet successful Men of Business, when
introduced into Government departments, do have their points. One
wonders how much the income-tax payer would be saved during the next
decade or two had some really great knight of industry, content to do
his own work and not covetous of that of other people (assuming such a
combination of the paragon and the freak to exist), been placed in
charge of the Ministry of Munitions as soon as Mr. Lloyd George had,
with his defiance of Treasury convention, with his wealth of
imagination, and with his irrepressible and buoyant courage, set the
thing up on the vast foundations already laid by the War Office.
Unsuccessful Men of Business, when introduced into Government
departments, have their points too, but they are mostly bad points.

The Man of Business' procedure, when he is placed at the head of a
Government department, or of some branch of a Government department,
in time of war is well known. He makes himself master of some gigantic
building or some set of buildings. He then sets to work to people the
premises with creatures of his own. He then,