But there is one question to which Socialists ought to devote a great deal more attention than they show any signs of devoting at present. Lord Randolph Churchill, the ablest and most far-sighted of modern party leaders, saw its importance twenty years ago, and put it in the fore-front of his programme. That question is the reform of government departments. Until this is honestly faced and dealt with, the Individualist will always have a powerful controversial weapon against Socialist propaganda. When the Socialist demands that the state shall undertake more duties, his opponent has only to point to the duties it has already undertaken and ask if he wants any more duties performed like that! A national system of transit run as the War Office is run would hardly be an unqualified blessing and would probably produce a reaction of the most damaging kind. The only answer is to reform the government departments and make them workmanlike and efficient bodies. Until this is done we shall be checked at every point every time we want a measure involving state ownership carried. Moreover we shall find it impossible to give effect to our policy of state regulation. The War Office has on the whole been most unfairly treated in being gibbetted as the supreme type of red tape and inefficiency. In neither respect is it really worse than most other branches of our administration--not so bad for example as the Local Government Board, which is so hopelessly understaffed and so miserably ineffective that it is obliged from mere instinct of self-preservation to oppose every forward movement in municipal politics lest it should be overburdened still further. It matters little who is its representative in the Cabinet. It is the Board itself and not its President for the time being that obstructs progress. Yet an efficient Local Government Board, encouraging progressive local bodies and harrying up backward ones, is an essential part of the “national minimum” policy. From every point of view therefore it is essential that our departments of state should be put on a new and better footing. A businesslike Home Office and a businesslike Local Government Board would do more for social reform than many acts of Parliament. SOME MATERIALS AND A POSSIBILITY. Successive Reform Acts have so widened the basis of the franchise in this country that the working man has now the issue of the great majority of elections in his hands. By the working man I here mean the manual labourer who earns weekly wages; the definition is not scientific, but it is I think effectively descriptive. It is difficult to define a working man, but people know him when they see him, as Mr. Morley said of a Jingo. The manual labourer then is master of the situation; and it becomes a matter of primary importance for any party which wishes for a parliamentary majority to consider what manner of man he is, and what kind of policy is likely to receive his favour.