The Zealots : Over-Regulation and its Bearing on National Waste.
By Sir John Keane. (Murray. is. 6d. net.)—Sir John Keane in this valuable pamphlet points out that Parliament cannot control the national expenditure until the departments are run in a business-like fashion and compelled to keep proper accounts. He contends that the present niggling methods of Treasury supervision actually promote waste of money by discouraging initiative on the part of departmental chiefs. From his recent experience in the War Office he shows what valuable results have been achieved by the adoption of a new system of accounting, devised by Colonel Grimwood and enforced by Sir Charles Harris. He would compel every department to keep similar accounts on a modern plan, so that the real cost of any service or branch could be ascertained at a glance. Every one who studies the yearly Estimates knows that, for all their seeming wealth of detail, they are illusory. Sir John Keane would ration the departments, allotting lump sums to the sections and giving the chiefs a fairly free hand in doing their work as thriftily as possible. He would abolish most of the financial branches with their enormous staffs, who do not make for economy but spend their time in carping at anything that is done by the administrative branches. Sir John Keane thinks that on the financial side of the War Office alone £612,000 a year might be saved at once, by the abolition of wholly un- necessary and obstructive officials. We can well believe it. Of course the bureaucracy would resist such reforms to the last ditch, but some day a strong Chancellor of the Exchequer, backed by an indignant House of Commons and the infuriated taxpayers, will insist that our cumbrous and wasteful adminis- trative machine shall be reconstructed on modern lines.
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