202 City Homes on Country Lanes 



agency can command the necessary confidence because 

 in the past no private agency has ever been equal to 

 the responsibility. Perhaps it is not in human nature 

 that any private agency should be equal to it. There 

 are drawbacks about the public service, chiefly the fact 

 that it is wretchedly underpaid, but it has one great 

 advantage — the fact that it enables a man to rise 

 above all thought of selfish personal interest, save as 

 his interest may be forwarded by noble service, and to 

 view the problems before him in a spirit of complete 

 detachment. This spirit of detachment is essential 

 to the sort of home-building that will be the real healing 

 and saving of our people. I repeat, it is not a ques- 

 tion of public money; it involves no raid on the public 

 treasury ; no taxing of some people for the benefit of 

 others; but it does involve a raid, if you please, upon 

 the nation's reserves of intellect, of knowledge, and of 

 heart. 



This is one of the great lessons learned in conse- 

 quence of Secretary Lane's inquiry in the interest of 

 national reconstruction. Necessity is still the mother 

 of Invention. It was found that with a fixed debt of 

 twenty-four billion, an annual budget of four or five 

 billion, and a currency inflation that cut the value of 

 every dollar in half, it would not be possible to obtain 

 from Congress — even if anybody had the courage to 

 ask it — anything approaching the amount of money 

 that would be required to develop a home-building 

 policy worthy of America. A big appropriation might 

 be had in the interest of our service men. That was 

 a matter that stood on different ground, lint Peace 

 has her dead and wounded as much as War. As a mat- 



