There is a nonmilitary aspect of the administrative developments of the year which it is important to note. In themselves these developments have been the result of the determination of the people to leave nothing undone which could contribute to the winning of the war. None the less they are bound to produce lasting and far-reaching effects on the social and economic life of the community. No record of the year would be complete which did not point out the changes which have been wrought in the structure of society by the experiences of the war. In the first place, the organic life of the community has been greatly strengthened. On the one hand, not only have enormous numbers of men, and latterly of women also, been mobilized for military and naval purposes, but the vast majority of the people are now working directly or indirectly on public service. If they are not in the army, the navy, or the civil service, they are growing food, or making munitions, or engaged in the work of organizing, transporting, or distributing the national supplies. On the other hand the State has taken control for the period of the war over certain national industries, such as the railways, shipping, coal, and iron mines, and the great majority of engineering businesses. It has also made itself responsible for the securing of adequate quantities of certain staple commodities and services, such as food, coal, timber, and other raw materials, railroad and sea transportation, and for distributing the available supplies justly as between individual and individual in the national interest. Regulating Prices The Government has further had to regulate prices and prevent profiteering. It has done so partly by controlling freights, fixing maximum prices to the home producer, and regulating wholesale and retail charges, and partly by its monopoly of imported supplies. The information which the Government has obtained as to sources of supply, consumption, and cost of production, and the relations it has entered into with other Governments as to the mutual purchase of essential products which they jointly control, have, for the first time, brought within the sphere of practical politics the possibility of fixing relatively stable world prices for fundamental staples. The State has even taken the drastic step of fixing the price of the four-pound loaf at 9d., at a considerable loss to itself.