The New Machinery of the State
Sir William Beveridge, through the columns of The Times, has issued an appeal for an effective instrument of co-ordination to deal with the infinite varieties of effort involved in the successful prosecution of war. Perhaps there is nothing at the moment which this country more needs than a competent body to advise and a smaller body to take decisions so that our military forces, our war industries, our home defence services, our food supplies, our finances should run smoothly in harness, without compe- tition with one another, and with one intelligible end in view. In the change-over from the freedom of peace time to the control of war we may land ourselves in muddle and chaos if those controls are not related one to another. We have the military, understanding their own special needs, pull- ing in one direction, A.R.P. in another, war industry, civilian industry, &c., in others. War today, as Sir William says, is totalitarian. All the activities of the country have to be fitted together like cogs in a vast machine. This cannot be done unless men who understand the social sciences are called in to give advice, and unless there is somebody with great authority in the War Cabinet to insist that that advice is taken. The country at war is a new and complicated machine in the making. It cannot be constructed or func- tion without engineers skilled in the science of the State.
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