"Bureaucracy," he says,[1] "as a matter of fact, does not choose expert workers; it chooses first-class bureaucrats. It would be inhuman if it did not look upon the world with the rather timid eyes of the sedentary clerk. It probably thinks that the world can be saved if a sufficient number of letters and reports are written about it. There are hundreds and thousands of clever, self-sacrificing officials in Government offices, who pass their lives in helpful work. But the most helpful work they can do is to stand on one side, and not act as a—buffer between the men who are themselves producing and the community which is receiving. It is not that all Government officials are dishonest or foolish; most of them are the reverse. The bad thing about them all is that they are clerks, and wealth is not made by clerks."
Thus all the attractions, such as they are, of State Socialism for those who see how black are the effects of the present system, are dismissed as a fraudulent and futile chimera by the advocates of the latest form of Socialistic zeal, namely the National Guilds. In the meantime the Capitalist may chuckle as he sees the Socialism that was the bogey of his
- ↑ The Guild State, page 59.
