SMART SOCIETY AND INEFFICIENCY.
CRITICS of the war, abandoning for the moment the chase of scape-goats, are beginning to devote themselves to an inquisition into the general, as opposed to the individual, causes of our failures and reverses. That, in itself, is some- thing to be thankful for, though it can hardly be contended that the results of these researches have hitherto proved either convincing or impressive. We are, on the whole, healthy and sound, says Mr. Mitesingham, but woefully wanting in brains, education, and capacity. We are terribly handicapped by our public-school system (which, by the way, the most enlightened Frenchmen are anxious to transplant across the Channel) and the fetish-worship of Oxford and Cambridge (where Mr. Gladstone and Mr. Morley had the misfortune to be educated, a misfortune escaped by Mr. Hugh Price Hughes and Mr. Chamberlain, not to mention Mr. Massingham himself). We do not appreciate Ibsen and Tolstoi (the later Tolstoi, that is, whom Tourgneneff just before his death entreated to return to literature) at their proper worth ; we are, in a word, a nation of muddlers. Mr. Massingham, how- ever, holds no monopoly of the function of public prosecutor of national inefficiency. Mr. Arnold White shares with him a poor opinion of our public schools and universities, but discovers the real tap-root of the evil in the " intermeddling of ' society' with the work of the nation," and proves to his satisfaction, in Monday's Daily Chronicle, that "efficiency and character are less regarded by smart society as the equipment for State service than birth, a conventional public school, and 'Varsity education, destructive of originality and initiative, and influential friends in the smart set." But Mr. White is not content with generalities. He proceeds to cite five cases in which the direct intervention of smart society has proved itself antagonistic to the nation, by "securing commands for its pets" and passing over men of tried capacity. "Many widows weep," so be declares, "because Sir Charles Warren was not a favourite in smart society." Sir F. Carrington, again, is another victim of the tyranny of smartness; and, most startling example of all, "smart society sneers at Lord Charles Beresford," who "is silenced [by a subordinate command in the Mediterranean] at the one moment in his own lifetime and in the history of England when his voice and his knowledge at the centre would have been of priceless value to the nation." The notion that any section of society, smart or otherwise, could muzzle the irrepressible ex-Member for York, will vastly entertain his many friends, both in and out of the Service. Mr. White's fourth instance is that of a naval officer pitchforked by social influence, rather than merit, into a staff appointment ; while his fifth and last relates to a false rumour of the relief of Ladysmith, which be stigmatises as "an unscrupulous device of the financial hangers-on of smart society for enabling people who knew that Buller had failed to sell mining stock to those who believed that he had succeeded." Having thus made the flesh of his readers creep by his lurid pictures of the dangers incurred by the public in surrendering to smart society the control of the Services, including the manipulation of news from the seat of war, Mr. White proceeds to admit that a "considerable portion" of the aristocracy act on the principle of noblesse oblige. and exhibit an intense antipathy to the drones and parasites of financial and smart life ; nay, more, that our officials, mainly recruited from a privileged caste, are free from corruption in its ralgarest form, and, though addicted to red tape, display bravery, cheeriness, and good temper. Bat, on the other hand, they combines lack of imagination with a contemptfor business men ; they are ignorant, complacently satisfied with their own incompetence, and blind to the serious side of life. We have not space to give in full the further charges brought by Mr. Arnold White against privilege, caste ascendency, red tape, and smart society (all of which he seems to regard as con- vertible terms), but the following sentence may serve as a
specimen of his logic and coherence of thought : "If we have discovered that Boer efficiency in the field can subsist with Hollander peculation, we have also proved that national humiliations are inseparable from the red tape, the super- cilious indifference, and the affectation of social superiority claimed by smart society over the men and women who pay them."
It might clear the ground a little of the confusion of thought and extravagance of expression imported into the discussion by Mr. White if one could arrive at a satisfactory definition of "smart society." To take the epithet by itself, there is certainly no incompatibility between smartness and efficiency, but rather the reverse. When we talk of a smart soldier, we certainly do not intend to cast doubts on his com- petence or capacity. More than that, if the word be used in its limited sense of well-dressed and well groomed, it cannot be said to connote qualities irreconcilable with success in the sphere of action. Foppery in dress is very often a mere phase in a man's development, but even where it is a constant attribute, it may be combined with gallantry in the field and sagacity in the council chamber. We all know what Wellington said of the dandies, and his estimate finds pictorial expression in one of John Leech's best known drawings at the time of the Crimean war. Admiral Dewey, the one commander on the American side who emerged from the recent war with a great and well merited reputation, has, it seems, long been noted for the fas- tidious elegance of his attire. But when the word smart is applied to society, it would be a great mistake to lay undue stress on its purely sartorial side. The meaning of "smart society" varies from decade to decade, almost from year to year, and while it may once have implied a strict conformity to the "petty decalogne of Mode," and still implies on the part of its votaries a good deal of extravagance and luxury, its essential significance at the present moment is not the worship of Worth (either with a small or a large w) so much as the worship of wits,—but wits of a particular sort.
The smart set of to-day are often positively careless in their dress, they are by no means exclusive in their company, and the infallible passport that admits within their charmed circle is the stamp of culture, not of caste.—Of birth they
think absolutely nothing, and very little of title.—And the culture must be either decadent or derniereri—Maeterlinck or
Huysmans, Yvette Gnilbert and Ibsen—while not to have been at Bayreuth is the mark of the hopeless outsider. Preciosity, conversational audacity, the avoidance of the conventional or normal—these are the leading characteristics of the inner circle of smart society, which assiduously cultivates the pose of intellectuality, depreciates strenuous endeavour, and holds dulness to be the unforgivable offence.
That the tendency of such a set can be anything but un- wholesome and unsettling we do not for a moment deny. But we entirely dissent from Mr. Arnold White's proposition that the source of our inefficiency is to be found in the inter- meddling of this section of society in the working of the national machine. We are convinced that the influence exerted by "smart society" is grossly exaggerated in his indictment, and that in particular his attack on the Universities and the Civil Service is a tissue of misrepresentation. Any one who was unaware of the real conditions of admission into the various public offices would, on reading his letter, almost infallibly conclude that it was entirely a matter of patron- age instead of being—with the exception of the Diplomatic Service—a matter of open competition. It is true that the majority of the first-class clerkships fall to Oxford and Cam- bridge men, but birth is no bar to admission, and Mr. White will hardly venture to contend that the examiners show favouritism to University candidates. What is more, so far from the Civil Service being a hot-bed of privilege, caste ascendency, and reactionary political views, it is notorious that a very large proportion, if not a considerable majority, of the higher permanent officials are deeply tinctured with advanced Liberal or Radical views. The case of the Treasury is too well known to call for comment, bat it is worth while to emphasise the fact that the harbouring of such views, even when openly avowed, has by an honourable tradition never been allowed to stand in the way of official advancement, and that the present Government recently bestowed a well-earned decoration on a, public servant, who states in a popular work of reference, that one of his chief recreations is "socialist propaganda." Lastly, the impeachment of University education as a source of national inefficiency may be met by giving the names of a few public servants educated at a single Oxford college within the space of ten years. They are those of Sir Alfred Milner, Mr. H. H. Asquith, Mr. Thomas Raleigh, and Mr. Clinton Dawkins—the one legal and the other financial member of the Viceroy's Council in India—Lord Curzon and his private secretary, Mr. W. P. Lawrence (formerly Settle- ment Commissioner in Cashmere), Sir Rennell Rodd, and Sir Edward Grey. The list might be greatly extended; it has been compiled without reference to an Oxford calendar, but it will perhaps serve as a measure of the fairness of Mr. White's controversial method. With one exception, these are all men of academic distinction, who have won their way to the front by sheer ability. We really expected a better grasp of his subject in Mr. Arnold White than that shown by °nide,
but his indictment of our soeial system is very much on a par with the satire of "The Massarenes" and far less true to life than the portraiture of Mr. Benson in "Mammon and Co."
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