ABSTRACT
By the end of the war, labor was not as fully controlled as an army in the field, but there is little doubt that a further extension of regulation would not have been possible without a complete transformation of industrial organization. Such an alteration in the basic pattern of industry was never sought by the Government, much less achieved. Yet State intervention did reach a scale which even the Mercantilists had not envisioned. The Mercantilists might have found practical difficulties in organizing State controls of industry in the years 1914 to 1918; the Liberal Government found theoretical rather than practical difficulties in instituting State regulation. It was slow to yield, but the imperatives of war could brook no doctrinaire objections. As a matter of fact, such theoretical opposition was not very widely or deeply raised during the course of the war. Myths die hard; while enormously weakened during the war, the Liberal non-interventionist creed, as an article of faith rather than as a course of conduct, was hardly disturbed even as the Government proceeded to violate all of its canons.
