Before the outbreak of the war, Judge Brandeis, of the United States Superior Court, wrote a paper about "The Curse of Bigness," which I would like to re-read just now if I could only remember who borrowed it from me. It is rather amusing to remember that he was dealing with trifling little matters such as the Standard Oil Company, railroad mergers, industrial corporations, trusts, and such things. Compared with the schemes that are in the air to-day they were like nursery games. Yet he argued with much logic that when organizations get beyond a certain size they become inefficient and wasteful. Instead of serving the purpose for which they were organized they stifle progress and development. Big organizations do not encourage new ideas as little ones do. Being beyond competition, they become sluggish and reactionary. I cannot help wondering if we shall not have the same difficulty with the big schemes that are being promoted just now. After all they will have to be run by human beings, and there is a limit to human powers. Judge Brandeis showed that business schemes could become too big for even the colossal business brain of J. Pierpont Morgan, and it is just possible that there may be schemes of statecraft too big for the brains of Lloyd George and Mr. Wilson and the others who are grappling with them. And the trouble is that we are all grappling with them and overlooking the fact that the biggest achievement possible to democracy is to give every individual freedom to direct his own affairs. At the present time people have altogether too many ideas about fixing up the world, and too few ideas about the homely tasks of ordinary citizenship. Let us call in our far-reaching thoughts and see what we can find to do right at home. If all of us would do that, the need for world-shaping schemes would probably disappear.