cials who carry it on. No one can deny
that the Civil Service is not only pure, but, taken as a whole, its
members individually are both able and industrious. It is better
organisation that is required. Some of the new Ministries ought to be
scrapped directly the War is over, and the business of others continued
only so far as necessary for winding up. But these new departments will
die hard.

Since the War new departments have grown up like mushrooms, sometimes
without any clear statement of their functions or powers being made, and
there has not been time to settle them at leisure by a course of
practice. The result is overlapping, friction which would be intolerable
but for the good-natured forbearance which English people have for a
state of confusion, waste of time and money in sending minutes, and in
correspondence between different departments, and often delays which
have had most unfortunate results. Does anyone know exactly what are the
respective functions and powers of the Ministry of Reconstruction, the
Ministry of Labour, the Board of Trade, the Ministry of Pensions, the
Ministry of National Service, the Board of Works, the Ministry of Food
Control, the Board of Agriculture and Fisheries, the War Trade
Department, the Home Office, the Local Government Board, the Committee
on Food Production, the Restriction of Enemy Supply Committee, the
Priorities Committees, the Ministry of Munitions, etc., etc. The list
might easily be extended.

A thorough revision of the executive departments is necessary if
government is to be both efficient and economical. There is plenty of
good material in the Civil Service, and it will always be easy to obtain
more. It is the system or want of system that is wrong.

The next question is to provide or restore a more effective general
control over expenditure and impose checks on the growing expenditure
which has been so marked in recent years, even before the War.

The ordinary machinery for dealing with and controlling expenditure is
or should be fourfold.

(1) The spending departments make definite estimates or are supposed to
do so. Since the War, this has not been the rule. Of course, there are
many cases in which it would have been absolutely impossible to let the
items of proposed expenditure be published or discussed in the House of
Commons; but, as soon as War requirements permit it, proper estimates
should again be prepared and pressure put upon the departments to red