“If the telephone service was cast upon the Post Office it would be to the detriment of both the postal and telegraph services. Then, again, it would increase enormously the Government staff. He need only appeal to the Members of Parliament present to say whether they would like to have the weekly appeals for increase of wages from those State servants still further extended.” Here we have exactly one of the arguments which is now being used against railway nationalisation, and by the very Minister who, 17 years after, did the very thing he had clearly condemned. I admit the argument would hold good if the restriction be not imposed by an inflexible rule that there should be no attempt to work the concern, whether Post Office, telephone, railway or other monopoly for purposes of profit. I have already referred to the mistake the Post Office are making in following the example of the private monopolist, the National Telephone Company, in charging for telephones according to distance, although between the very same towns in which different rates are charged the same department charges 6d. only for telegrams! This can only be with the strange, yet futile, intention of making more profit without regard to the benefit of the community. If the same rate were charged for Trunk calls as for local calls, many more provincial and country people would subscribe, and the wires being already laid and exchanges established, the additional expense would be but small. It would seem, indeed, that the search after profits in the case of Government or municipal monopolies is as futile as the search by people after happiness, personified by Maeterlinck as “The Blue Bird,” and that when the only object is to benefit the community, the profits come, as does happiness, when the only object is that of benefiting other people. Now, in considering the principle here laid down, it appears to me that there are four rules which should be observed when a nation or municipality undertakes anything in the nature of a trading concern:-- 1. Only such concerns should be taken over as are, and must be, =in the very nature of things, a monopoly=, or, in other words, are not susceptible of effective competition. 2. Any such concern taken over should be worked with =the sole object in view of benefiting the community= and, therefore, the charges made should be so adjusted as to pay for the acquisition of the concern and for working expenses, and any surplus from time to time applied, only in improving the efficiency of the undertaking, or in reducing the charges made.