Certificates and the various forms of Government securities which have been issued through it was a cause of much complaint. But here again we must remember that owing to the claims of the recruiting sergeant and the conscription officer, the post office lost many of its best workers at a time when the work thrown upon it was greatly increased.
More serious in its immediate practical effect was the competition between one Government office and another for the goods and services which they required. Attention was called in the fourth year of the war to this form of extravagance in a Report of the National Expenditure Committee. It does seem astonishing that Government offices should not by that time have evolved some better system than going into the market against one another, raising the cost of their administration and impairing their efficiency. Unfortunately this fault was probably only a symptom of interdepartmental jealousy, the extent of which is almost incredible to those who have not been brought face to face with it, and caused some cynics to maintain that during the war the departments were much more eager to win victories over one another than to defeat the
