Apparently the last thing the Government under Mr. Lloyd George's
leadership can do is to be practical about expenditure, although it is plain that if expenditure continues at its present level it will ruin the country and wreck the Government. The taxation of site values has been swept away as a dead failure, but the Land Valuation Department, for some wholly inadequate reason, remains. The Employment Exchanges have not justified the amount spent upon them, but we never hear of the Govern- ment eagerly pressing on the investigations which are to decide whether the Exchanges shall be abolished or not. Now we are to have a new Ministry, the Ministry of Mines, which is in effect the Coal Control Department made permanent. So it goes on. This is the sure way " to run the ship under," as we have pointed out in a leading article.
