regret that a small portion of these billions which have gone to waste could not have been expended for the very purposes outlined—­education, public health, the advancement of science and art, public buildings, roads and parks, and the proper housing of populations!  It is also dawning upon us, as a result of new practices brought about by the war, that our organization of industry was happy-go-lucky, inefficient and wasteful, and that a more scientific and economical organization is imperative.  Under such a new system it may well be, as modern economists claim, that, we shall have an ample surplus for the Common Good.

The chief objection to a National or Democratic Control of Industry has been that it would tend to create vast political machines and thus give the politicians in office a nefarious power.  It is not intended here to attempt a refutation of this contention.  The remedy lies in a changed attitude of the employee and the citizen toward government, and the fact that such an attitude is now developing is not subject to absolute proof.  It may be said, however, that no greater menace to democracy could have arisen than the one we seem barely to have escaped—­the control of politics and government by the capitalistic interests of the nation.  What seems very clear is that an evolutionary drift toward the national control of industry has for many years been going on, and that the war has tremendously speeded up the tendency.  Government has stepped in to protect the consumer of necessities from the profiteer, and is beginning to set a limit upon profits; has regulated exports and imports; established a national shipping corporation and merchant marine, and entered into other industries; it has taken over the railroads at least for the duration of the war, and may take over coal mines, and metal resources, as well as the forests and water power; it now contemplates the regulation of wages.

The exigency caused by the war, moreover, has transformed the former practice of international intercourse.  Co-operation has replaced competition.  We are reorganizing and regulating our industries, our business, making sacrifices and preparing to make more sacrifices in order to meet the needs of our Allies, now that they are sore beset.  For a considerable period after the war is ended, they will require our aid.  We shall be better off than any other of the belligerent nations, and we shall therefore be called upon to practice, during the years of reconstruction, a continuation of the same policy of helpfulness.  Indeed, for the nations of the world to spring, commercially speaking, at one another’s throats would be suicidal even if it were possible.  Mr. Sidney Webb has thrown a flood of light upon the conditions likely to prevail.  For example, speculative export trade is being replaced by collective importing, bringing business more directly under the control of the consumer.  This has been done by co-operative societies, by municipalities