"Efficiency," of course, is futile for the same reason
that strong men, will-power and the superman are futile.
That is, it is futile because it only deals with actions after
they have been performed. It has no philosophy for incidents
before they happen; therefore it has no power of choice.
An act can only be successful or unsuccessful when it is over;
if it is to begin, it must be, in the abstract, right or wrong.
There is no such thing as backing a winner; for he cannot be a
winner when he is backed. There is no such thing as fighting on
the winning side; one fights to find out which is the winning side.
If any operation has occurred, that operation was efficient.
If a man is murdered, the murder was efficient. A tropical
sun is as efficient in making people lazy as a Lancashire
foreman bully in making them energetic. Maeterlinck is
as efficient in filling a man with strange spiritual tremors
as Messrs. Crosse and Blackwell are in filling a man with jam.
But it all depends on what you want to be filled with.
Lord Rosebery, being a modern skeptic, probably prefers the
spiritual tremors. I, being an orthodox Christian, prefer the jam.
But both are efficient when they have been effected; and inefficient
until they are effected. A man who thinks much about success must
be the drowsiest sentimentalist; for he must be always looking back.
If he only likes victory he must always come late for the battle.
For the man of action there is nothing but idealism.

This definite ideal is a far more urgent and practical matter in our
existing English trouble than any immediate plans or proposals.
For the present chaos is due to a sort of general oblivion
of all that men were originally aiming at. No man demands
what he desires; each man demands what he fancies he can get.