Perfection, it may reasonably be argued however, need not necessarily entail extravagance; and certainly the system of supply in operation at Crewe, efficient as it undoubtedly was, was productive of saving rather than of waste. The fact that the cost of labour, on the cessation of hostilities, showed an increase of 135 per cent. over and above that which was prevalent at the commencement of the war, cannot by any manner of means be laid at the door of the railway directorates, who, in regard to questions of wages and discipline, were controlled by the national agreements which from time to time came into being. Neither could the railway companies be classified even in a minimum degree amongst those "repulsive phenomena," the war-profiteers; for, the railways having become, as it were, part and parcel of the Government, it resulted as a natural corollary that work carried out in railway workshops whether for railway or munitions-of-war purposes became _ipso facto_ Government work, and the bill for all such work when presented was made up simply and solely of the actual cost of materials, wages, and workshop expenses, plus 12-1/2 per cent. for supervision and establishment charges. The only profit with which the coffers of the railway companies were replenished in return for their war-time energies was in respect of munitions manufactured for private firms, and even then the profit never exceeded 10 per cent. over and above the actual cost of production. Those were indeed "the times that try men's souls," and it was the Government policy throughout--a policy which, as happened to be the case in Germany, was "neither fish nor fowl," in that whilst inflicting untold hardship, loss, and suffering on some, it relieved others, saddling them with a minimum of inconvenience, and removing from them all "conception of the duty of universal service"--to which was attributable that extravagance "in men and money" referred to by Sir Douglas Haig. On the occasion of the introduction of the first post-war Budget, when the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Mr. Chamberlain, suggested (cp. the _Times_, May 1st, 1919) that it would be of "interest to divide the year into the period before the armistice and the period since the armistice was signed, and to see what the average daily expenditure was in each of those two periods," Mr. Adamson (Fife W. Lab.) expressed a desire to temper his criticism with sincere commiseration for the Chancellor, whose task was to find the first instalment of the terrific obligations imposed upon the country by the extravagance, and in some respects the incredible folly, of spending departments during the war period, which had resulted in a daily average expenditure during the earlier of the two periods mentioned by Mr. Chamberlain, namely from April 1st to November 9th, 1918, of £7,443,000; in the later period, namely from November 10th, 1918 to March 31st, 1919, of £6,476,000.