a that money invested in an
essential industrial undertaking pays the State far better than money
advanced to it at the cost of five per cent.

Not to weary the reader with an incident, however telling, the end of
this affair was that after going backwards and forwards between a
Cabinet Minister and a Treasury official, Lord Leverhulme was at last
permitted to ask the public for a small sum of money which he himself
considered inadequate for the Government's purpose.

I have never heard him speak bitterly of his political experiences, but
I have never heard him express anything but an amused contempt for the
antiquated machinery which passes amongst politicians for a system of
government.

The English [he says] have pushed their fortunes, never by the aid
of Government, but on the contrary almost always in the teeth of
Government opposition. There is no man so lacking in imagination as
a Government official, and no man, unless it is a banker, so
wanting in courage as a Cabinet Minister. The wealth of England is
the creation of her industrial population. The brains, the faith,
the energy of the capitalist, and the brains, the loyalty, the
strength of labour, these have made us the first nation of the
world. There has been only one real obstacle in our path. Not
foreign competition, for that is an incentive, but the cowardice
and stupidity of Governments. We possess an empire unrivalled in
its opportunities for trade and commerce, an empire which, you
would surely think, could not fail to inspire a statesman with
great ideas. But what happens? We have a Government which thinks it
has exhausted statesmanship by crippling industry at home in order
to pay off our war debt as quickly as possible. Instead of setting
itself to create more wealth, with the wealth of the world lying at
its feet, it sets itself to dry up the sources of wealth at the
centre of the empire. But it is no use talking. One thing a
Government in this country cannot stand is imagination; and another
is courage. The British Empire is in the hands of a lot of
clerks--and timid clerks at that. We must do our best to get along
without statesmanship at the head.

The reader may not remember that some years before Mr. Lloyd George
plunged into a disordered series of social reforms, Lord Leverhulme,
sitting in the House of Commons, introduced Bi