day, with good direction and avoidance of bad conditions. After a couple of years of such intensive training they should be drafted into ordinary factories, with the warning that if they fall out of work again, another year's compulsory hard training will be the result. In another way this atrophy of mind may be seen and felt as a temporary condition by members of boards and committees. What is everyone's business is nobody's business; and when each person feels that he is not personally responsible, a numbness and inaction ensues which is characteristic of such bodies. Men, any one of whom would act sensibly when alone, will succumb to the paralysing sense that they need not think because nine other men are doing so, and the results are well known as characterising these assemblies which have "neither a body to be kicked nor a soul to be damned." There are very few public bodies which are not really dependent on the individual thought and design of one person, criticised and amended by the collateral views of others. In short, all action and rule must be personal and not corporate, however much the person may be checked and controlled by general opinion of the public, or of a restricted body. Without personal initiative atrophy is the result. Another great theatre of mental atrophy is officialism, where a man is bound to follow certain rules and routine rather than to think. A German has remarked to me that a man who is perfectly reasonable and intelligent in private life becomes quite foolish as soon as he enters his office. This constant result is the strongest reason for not extending official control of affairs needlessly, or the management of public work by officials. Private enterprise will always be more effective than an official system, because it is solely the result of individual initiative. The enormous monopolies of railways in England are on the whole far more beneficial to the public than the State railways of other countries. The evils of corporate monopoly, checked by law and supervision of the Board of Trade, are less than the evil of stagnation by official atrophy. In the Republic of France the principal line runs its best trains slower than, and at three times the cost of, the best trains on great English lines. (7) It is only competition which makes permanent the improved mental variations which occur. The evils of competition in physical things almost disappear in the mental field; and, unless misused as in a foolishly designed examination, there seems an unmixed benefit from unlimited competition of mind. It is only by such competition that higher types of ability have been established in the past, and it is to such that we must look for future improvement. It is true that in various directions we find a dislike of competition; but that is the surest sign that it is effective, and therefore beneficial to the whole body.