It should be clear in each department who has authority to decide any particular question, to incur expenditure, to enter into binding agreements.  The executive government of the country is in a chaotic state, relieved to some extent by the good sense and good feeling of the members of the great army of officials who carry it on.  No one can deny that the Civil Service is not only pure, but, taken as a whole, its members individually are both able and industrious.  It is better organisation that is required.  Some of the new Ministries ought to be scrapped directly the War is over, and the business of others continued only so far as necessary for winding up.  But these new departments will die hard.

Since the War new departments have grown up like mushrooms, sometimes without any clear statement of their functions or powers being made, and there has not been time to settle them at leisure by a course of practice.  The result is overlapping, friction which would be intolerable but for the good-natured forbearance which English people have for a state of confusion, waste of time and money in sending minutes, and in correspondence between different departments, and often delays which have had most unfortunate results.  Does anyone know exactly what are the respective functions and powers of the Ministry of Reconstruction, the Ministry of Labour, the Board of Trade, the Ministry of Pensions, the Ministry of National Service, the Board of Works, the Ministry of Food Control, the Board of Agriculture and Fisheries, the War Trade Department, the Home Office, the Local Government Board, the Committee on Food Production, the Restriction of Enemy Supply Committee, the Priorities Committees, the Ministry of Munitions, etc., etc.  The list might easily be extended.

A thorough revision of the executive departments is necessary if government is to be both efficient and economical.  There is plenty of good material in the Civil Service, and it will always be easy to obtain more.  It is the system or want of system that is wrong.

The next question is to provide or restore a more effective general control over expenditure and impose checks on the growing expenditure which has been so marked in recent years, even before the War.

The ordinary machinery for dealing with and controlling expenditure is or should be fourfold.

(1) The spending departments make definite estimates or are supposed to do so.  Since the War, this has not been the rule.  Of course, there are many cases in which it would have been absolutely impossible to let the items of proposed expenditure be published or discussed in the House of Commons; but, as soon as War requirements permit it, proper estimates should again be prepared and pressure put upon the departments to reduce them.  At present the pressure is all the other way; the heads of the departments apparently like to have a large establishment as well as to extend