f Commons, to keep capital to be
lent to it rather than expended in, perhaps unnecessary, industry.
Here, again, it is clearly in the interest of the taxpayer that
Government loans should be raised on the most favourable terms
possible. But if, in order to do so, we starve industry of capital
that it needs, and so check the production on which all of us,
Government and citizens alike, ultimately have to live, we shall
be scoring an immediate advantage at the expense of future
progress--spoiling a possibly brilliant break by putting down the
white ball for a couple of points.

There is thus a good deal to be said for setting capital free, before
we have even arrived at the most serious objection to regulating it
under Treasury licence. This objection is the exasperation, delay and
uncertainty involved by this control. Even if we had an ideally wise
and expeditious body to decide about capital issues it might not be
the best thing to set it to work. But when we remember that in order
to see that the wrong sort of issue is not made, all issues will
have to pass through the terribly slow-working process of official
selection before the necessary licence is finally granted, it begins
to look still more likely that we should do well to run the risk of
letting a few goats through the gate, rather than keep all the sheep
waiting outside for months, with the probable result that many of them
may lose altogether their chance of final salvation. It will be noted
from the official statement that the arbitrary methods of the old
Committee are to be modified. It has long been a by-word among those
who had dealings with it; they abused it in quite sulphurous language
and were wont to quote it as an example of all that bureaucratic
tyranny is and should not be, thereby doing some injustice to our
bureaucrats, seeing that the Committee was manned not by officials but
by business men, clothed _pro hac vice_ in the thunder of Whitehall.
The new Committee is to sit by panels of three, so as to expedite
matters, and so as to allow applicants the privilege of giving oral
evidence. This is an innovation that will save some exasperation, but
it will hardly accelerate matters, especially as the decision of the
panels will be subject to confirmation by the full Committee, so that
all the work will have to be done twice over. There is thus much
reason to fear that delay, so fatal in business matters, will be an
inevitable offspring of the effort