108 Mr. H. Wickham Steed [May 4, 



unsuspected danger to our individual and national freedom. I do 

 not refer to the adjustments that may be requisite in our system of 

 national defence ; those adjustments may be constitutional, military, 

 naval, economic and financial. The development of the submarine 

 and airplane ; our realization of the fact that, though linked more 

 firmly with the Oversea Dominions and, happily, in closer agreement 

 with the United States of America, these Islands will henceforth be 

 more than ever a part of the continent of Europe ; the need for 

 maintaining firm political and economic alliances ; the recognition 

 of the insidious character of cosmopolitan finance, and of the 

 truth that a nation's wealth forms an integral part of its defensive 

 resources — all these things may work radical changes in the forms 

 of our provision for national security. But these things are, so to 

 speak, externals. I have no fear of what is called "militarism." 

 Militarism is, in the last resort, a psychological product, and our 

 minds are not " made that way." But we are threatened by a far 

 more serious danger — the danger of an overgrown, over-organized 

 and consciously over-weening officialdom which, in the form of an 

 immense bureaucracy, may strangle our ancient liberties with red- 

 tape. 



Before returning to England I wrote a book upon the Hapsburg 

 Monarchy, in which some hard, though I believe tnie, things were 

 said of the Austrian official class or bureaucracy. Had I then 

 possessed as much knowledge as I have since obtained of the ways 

 of British officialdom, some, though by no means all, of the criti- 

 cism of the Austrian official world would have been qualified by an 

 indication that in England things were not very different. Even 

 before the war the problem of the bureaucracy was fast becoming a 

 nightmare in Austria. More than 'J00,000 individuals out of a total 

 population of some oO,000,000 were in the direct employ of the 

 State, and were entitled to regard themselves as masters of the public. 

 Their division into eleven ranks or classes, each with its special 

 emoluments and privileges, had given to the Austrian State and to 

 Austrian society a semi-Chinese character and an Asiatic inelasticity. 

 I doubt whether, even in Prussia or in Russia, the bureaucratic 

 problem can be so profitably studied as in Austria. Its study forced 

 upon me the conclusion that in no community where officialdom 

 predominates and feels that it is " the Government," can there be 

 any effective safeguard of individual freedom. 



One of the most characteristic illustrations of Austrian red tape 

 was related to me by Count Clary und Aldringen, a former Austrian 

 Premier. During his premiership a greengrocer in one of the Vienna 

 thoroughfares Ijegan to sell dried vegetables. A grocer, who also 

 sold dried vegetables and whose shop was in the same street, laid an 

 information against him for violating the Gewerheordnunfj, or in- 

 dustrial regulations. The police appointed a commission of inquiry, 

 which decided, as a legal question was involved, to refer the matter 



