Suppose the people of Braintree and Bocking, not waiting for that lead, said:  “But this is absurd!  Let us have an identical council and one clerk, and get ahead, instead of keeping up this silly pretence that one town is two.”  Suppose someone of that 300,000 pounds’ worth of gentlemen at the Local Government Board set to work to replan our local government areas generally on less comic lines.  Suppose his official superiors helped, instead of snubbing him....

I see nothing of the sort happening.  I see everywhere wary, watchful little men, thinking of themselves, thinking of their parish, thinking close, holding tight....

I know that there is a whole web of excuses for all these complicated, wasteful, and obstructive arrangements of our local government, these arrangements that I have taken merely as a sample of the general human way of getting affairs done.  For it is affairs at large I am writing about, as I warned the reader at the beginning.  Directly one inquires closely into any human muddle, one finds all sorts of reasonable rights and objections and claims barring the way to any sweeping proposals.  I can quite imagine that Bocking has admirable reasons for refusing coalescence with Braintree, except upon terms that Braintree could not possibly consider.  I can quite understand that there are many inconveniences and arguable injustices that would be caused by a merger of the two areas.  I have no doubt it would mean serious loss to So-and-so, and quite novel and unfair advantage to So-and-so.  It would take years to work the thing and get down to the footing of one water supply and an ambidextrous dustman on the lines of perfect justice and satisfactoriness all round.

But what I want to maintain is that these little immediate claims and rights and vested interests and bits of justice and fairness are no excuse at all for preventing things being done in the clear, clean, large, quick way.  They never constituted a decent excuse, and now they excuse waste and delay and inconvenience less than ever.  Let us first do things in the sound way, and then, if we can, let us pet and compensate any disappointed person who used to profit by their being done roundabout instead of earning an honest living.  We are beginning to agree that reasonably any man may be asked to die for his country; what we have to recognise is that any man’s proprietorship, interest, claims or rights may just as properly be called upon to die.  Bocking and Braintree and Mr. John Smith—­Mr. John Smith, the ordinary comfortable man with a stake in the country—­have been thinking altogether too much of the claims and rights and expectations and economies of Bocking and Braintree and Mr. John Smith.  They have to think now in a different way....