Accordingly the great industrialist, able as was no other man in this particular to serve his country's need, called humbly at the Treasury for permission to ask the public for capital. He was received by an official who refused point-blank to listen to such a proposition. Lord Leverhulme mentioned again the name of the Cabinet Minister who had requested him to embark on this venture. This was nothing to the official. He had nothing to do with other departments. His business was to see that the public's money came to the Treasury; he was certainly not going to countenance the raising of money for an industrial purpose. You could no more have got into this gentleman's head than you could have got into the head of a rabbit the idea that money invested in an essential industrial undertaking pays the State far better than money advanced to it at the cost of five per cent. Not to weary the reader with an incident, however telling, the end of this affair was that after going backwards and forwards between a Cabinet Minister and a Treasury official, Lord Leverhulme was at last permitted to ask the public for a small sum of money which he himself considered inadequate for the Government's purpose. I have never heard him speak bitterly of his political experiences, but I have never heard him express anything but an amused contempt for the antiquated machinery which passes amongst politicians for a system of government. The English [he says] have pushed their fortunes, never by the aid of Government, but on the contrary almost always in the teeth of Government opposition. There is no man so lacking in imagination as a Government official, and no man, unless it is a banker, so wanting in courage as a Cabinet Minister. The wealth of England is the creation of her industrial population. The brains, the faith, the energy of the capitalist, and the brains, the loyalty, the strength of labour, these have made us the first nation of the world. There has been only one real obstacle in our path. Not foreign competition, for that is an incentive, but the cowardice and stupidity of Governments. We possess an empire unrivalled in its opportunities for trade and commerce, an empire which, you would surely think, could not fail to inspire a statesman with great ideas. But what happens? We have a Government which thinks it has exhausted statesmanship by crippling industry at home in order to pay off our war debt as quickly as possible. Instead of setting itself to create more wealth, with the wealth of the world lying at its feet, it sets itself to dry up the sources of wealth at the centre of the empire. But it is no use talking. One thing a Government in this country cannot stand is imagination; and another is courage. The British Empire is in the hands of a lot of clerks--and timid clerks at that. We must do our best to get along