a
force like gravitation, which in itself is neither good nor bad, but
which the engineer uses, when he can, to do his work for him. If it is
foolish to idealize it, it is equally shortsighted to neglect it. In
what are described _par excellence_ as "the services" it has always
been recognized that _esprit de corps_ is the foundation of efficiency,
and all means, some wise and some mischievous, are used to encourage
it: in practice, indeed, the power upon which the country relied as its
main safeguard in an emergency was the professional zeal of the navy
and nothing else. Nor is {150} that spirit peculiar to the professions
which are concerned with war. It is a matter of common training,
common responsibilities, and common dangers. In all cases where
difficult and disagreeable work is to be done, the force which elicits
it is normally not merely money, but the public opinion and tradition
of the little society in which the individual moves, and in the esteem
of which he finds that which men value in success.

To ignore that most powerful of stimuli as it is ignored to-day, and
then to lament that the efforts which it produces are not forthcoming,
is the climax of perversity. To aim at eliminating from industry the
growth and action of corporate feeling, for fear lest an organized body
of producers should exploit the public, is a plausible policy. But it
is short-sighted. It is "to pour away the baby with the bath," and to
lower the quality of the service in an attempt to safeguard it. A wise
system of administration would recognize that professional solidarity
can do much of its work for it more effectively than it can do it
itself, because the spirit of his profession is part of the individual
and not a force outside him, and would make it its object to enlist
that temper in the public service. It is only by that policy, indeed,
that the elaboration of cumbrous regulations to prevent men doing what
they should not, with the incidental result of sometimes preventing
them from doing what they should--it is only by that policy that what
is mechanical and obstructive in bureaucracy can be averted. For
industry cannot run without laws. It must either control itself by
professional standards, or it must be controlled by officials who are
not of the {151} craft and who, however zealous and well-meaning, can
hardly have the feel of it in their fingers. Public control and
criticism are indispensable. But they shou