There is a great variety of suggestions for this increase of public wealth and production.Many of them have an extreme reasonableness.The extent to which they will be adopted depends, no doubt, very largely upon the politician and permanent official, and both these classes are prone to panic in the presence of reality.In spite of its own interests in restraining a rise in prices, the old official "salariat" is likely to be obstructive to any such innovations.It is the resistance of spurs and red tabs to military innovations over again.This is the resistance of quills and red tape.On the other hand the organisation of Britain for war has "officialised"a number of industrial leaders, and created a large body of temporary and adventurous officials.They may want to carry on into peace production the great new factories the war has created.At the end of the war, for example, every belligerent country will be in urgent need of cheap automobiles for farmers, tradesmen, and industrial purposes generally, America is now producing such automobiles at a price of eighty pounds.But Europe will be heavily in debt to America, her industries will be disorganised, and there will therefore be no sort of return payment possible for these hundreds of thousands of automobiles.
A country that is neither creditor nor producer cannot be an importer.Consequently though those cheap tin cars may be stacked as high as the Washington Monument in America, they will never come to Europe.On the other hand the great shell factories of Europe will be standing idle and ready, their staffs disciplined and available, for conversion to the new task.The imperative common sense of the position seems to be that the European governments should set themselves straight away to out-Ford Ford, and provide their own people with cheap road transport.
But here comes in the question whether this common-sense course is inevitable.Suppose the mental energy left in Europe after the war is insufficient for such a constructive feat as this.
There will certainly be the obstruction of official pedantry, the hold-up of this vested interest and that, the greedy desire of "private enterprise" to exploit the occasion upon rather more costly and less productive lines, the general distrust felt by ignorant and unimaginative people of a new way of doing things.
The process after all may not get done in the obviously wise way.
This will not mean that Europe will buy American cars.It will be quite unable to buy American cars.It will be unable to make anything that America will not be able to make more cheaply for itself.But it will mean that Europe will go on without cheap cars, that is to say it will go on a more sluggishly and clumsily and wastefully at a lower economic level.Hampered transport means hampered production of other things, and in increasing inability to buy abroad.And so we go down and down.
It does not follow that because a course is the manifestly right and advantageous course for the community that it will be taken.
I am reminded of this by a special basket in my study here, into which I pitch letters, circulars, pamphlets and so forth as they come to hand from a gentleman named Gattie, and his friends Mr.
Adrian Ross, Mr.Roy Horniman, Mr.Henry Murray and others.His particular project is the construction of a Railway Clearing House for London.It is an absolutely admirable scheme.It would cut down the heavy traffic in the streets of London to about one-third; it would enable us to run the goods traffic of England with less than half the number of railway trucks we now employ; it would turn over enormous areas of valuable land from their present use as railway goods yards and sidings; it would save time in the transit of goods and labour in their handling.
It is a quite beautifully worked out scheme.For the last eight or ten years this group of devoted fanatics has been pressing this undertaking upon an indifferent country with increasing vehemence and astonishment at that indifference.The point is that its adoption, though it would be of general benefit, would be of no particular benefit to any leading man or highly placed official.On the other hand it would upset all sorts of individuals who are in a position to obstruct it quietly--and they do so.Meaning no evil.I dip my hand in the accumulation and extract a leaflet by the all too zealous Mr.Murray.In it he denounces various public officials by name as he cheats and scoundrels, and invites a prosecution for libel.
In that fashion nothing will ever get done.There is no prosecution, but for all that I do not agree with Mr.Murray about the men he names.These gentlemen are just comfortable gentlemen, own brothers to these old generals of ours who will not take off their spurs.They are probably quite charming people except that they know nothing of that Fear of God which searches by heart.Why should they bother?
