rONCI.USTON. 473 



• — have committed the greatest blunders. They can render 

 very valuable services, if they will only be careful to confine 

 themselves to their logical limitations instead of assiduously 

 trying to begin beyond. You cannot from outside create 

 Organisation. You cannot from outside create that security 

 upon which Co-operative Credit, like all Credit, can alone 

 be based. The movement wants to be started, led and 

 pushed from within, by those for whose benefit it is designed. 

 Assisted and Government-created Co-operation, whether 

 of Credit or of any other form, blossoms up and withers, 

 bearing no fruit. We have the evidence of this abroad — 

 more specifically in Austria. Authorities may teach — and 

 they should. They may remove barriers. But, as Mr. 

 Gladstone insisted, when the first Friendly Societies Bill 

 was under discussion, they must not provide the money 

 for, and they must not interfere in, the direction and 

 management of, business. It is spontaneous action alone 

 which can make Organisation a success. 



Pace Lord Denman and Mr. Leroy Lewis, everybody 

 now recognises the necessity of easy working credit for 

 Agriculture. In France, when the authorities and agricul- 

 tural organisations set themselves to repair the mischief 

 done to Agriculture during the German occupation in the 

 now " liberated " departments, the first thing that they 

 took in hand was the reconstitution of perished credit 

 societies. 



The methods of providing such have long ceased to 

 be a mystery. Some of those adopted in practice are 

 faulty. And nowhere do such faulty practices abound 

 more than in the countries in which co-operative Credit 

 first took its birth. But there are very good ones too, 

 and we see them successful all round, and can indeed test 

 their quality by the degree of their success, not only in 

 providing money, but also in what Mr. Gladstone pronounced 

 to be far more valuable, namely, their function of " man- 

 making." I have been privileged to reveal such sound 

 methods to the Irish and to determine Lord Curzon in 

 ordering their application in India. My advice has been 

 followed in both countries. And in both countries has 



