The house of Industry : a new estate of the realm

A PRECEDENT—WHAT TO AVOID 51

women who in times of peace would have shrunk with loathing from the task assigned to them. Must those hectic and degrading days once more return ?

The business of the Ministry of Munitions was to maintain armies exceeding fifteen million men (for it supplied our Allies) with actual munitions and with ancillary goods and services. A stupendous undertaking, greater perhaps than would be the House of Industry’s task, working at high pressure for a decade or two. Obviously, too, the House of Industry would be immeasurably better equipped; for it would have the best brains and most competent personnel at its disposal. Instead of our best brains being blown to pieces or poisoned by senseless hatreds, they would be utilised in the service of life and not death. Nor will the thoughtful man fail to ponder the phenomenon, that in those days, notwithstanding the tragic hemorrhage of life and wealth, wages were comparatively high and there were no unemployed. How strange, how passing strange, that we should organise death, yet suffer endless misery because we fail to organise life: will not pave the way to our promised heritage, that we shall have life and have it abundantly.

The organisation of the Ministry of Munitions was, tersely stated, the superimposition upon industry of a temporary and amateur bureaucracy armed with unexampled authority. It was the acme of centralised administration; it was State Socialism in excelcis; it was an autocracy backed