OFFICIAL SHUNTING. T HERE is one feature in the appointments to
the newly created Naval Staff which has more than a professional interest. For reasons the force of which cannot be denied Mr. Churchill lime determined that the Third Sea Lord has more work on his shoulders than any one man can possibly got through. He is " burdened with . . . the finance of an office spending in the present year upwards of £20,000,000, and with the intricate and far- reaching commercial transactions arising out of contracts and purchasing business on a scale probably not equalled in this country." But this is only one part of his task. He has also to see that the right types of ships are built to carry out the war policy of the Admiralty, and that they are ready at the proper dates. " He must be left free to reflect upon the great and novel issues which are constantly presented," to watch month by month the progress of the vessels under construction, and to ascertain by personal visits to the Fleets what improvements are possible even in ships of the latest type. It is plain that these strictly naval matters furnish ample employment for one official, and that to give him in addition the conduct of vast commercial transactions is to make of him a very Issachar. Accordingly an additional Civil Lord is to be appointed, and the man chosen is Sir Francis Hopwood. From the personal point of view a. better choice could not have been made. The range of Sir Francis Hopwood's experience in the public service can hardly be equalled by any of the Civil Servants of the Crown. In the Board of Trade he served as Assistant Solicitor in the Law Department, as Secretary to the Railway Department, and finally became the Permanent Secretary of the Board. Government Inquiries and Special Missions filled up the intervals of his official time and prepared him for the Per- manent Secretaryship of the Colonies in 1907. After three years spent in that post ho was made Vice-Chairman of the Development Commission, and now we meet him as the Additional Civil Lord of the Admiralty. It is a career of almost unexampled variety, and constitutes the best possible testimony to the value of Sir Francis Hopwood's services.
There is, however, another aspect of the appointment which is not quite so satisfactory. It is a striking illustra- tion of the change which has come over the relation of the Civil Service to its Parliamentary chiefs. Under the old system neither the House of Commons nor the country had any knowledge of what was going on in a .public office except through its responsible head. He appropriated the credit or accepted the blame of all that his permanent Staff had done. They were content to remain in the Clark; the value of their underground labour was known to their chief and to no one else. The Civil Servant of to- day is on the high road to a very different position. He is brought into fuller light. His name is more widely known. His official successes are more and more attributed to him instead of, as formerly, to his chief. It is not at all surprising in this change. The very title " Permanent Secretary " marks a decided advantage over a Minister who comes and goes without much reference to the nature of business he has to superintend. The Board of Education, for example, has had four Ministers at its head since 1906, but not one of them has yet passed an Education Bill. The work of the office has been done by the Permanent Secretary. Two results promise to follow from this change. One of them we have seen in the case of Sir Francis Hopwood. The exceptionally capable man is moved from one post to another, not for his own sake, but for the sake of the office to which be is transferred. At first sight, no doubt, this seems a very sensible plan. Wherever the best man is wanted there the best mail goes. But there are other sides to this process which are apt to be forgotten. There is, first, the interest of the office from which the exceptional man is carried away. When Sir Francis Hopwood was trans- ferred from the Colonial Office to the Development Com- mission the explanation was the same as that which is now given for his being passed on to the Admiralty. But if his services were specially valuable to the Development Com- mission—so valuable that the Colonies, not an unimportant department in these days, had to put up with his re- moval—the Commission can hardly be other than a loser by this fresh transfer. Next there is the interest of the office to which the exceptional man is moved. It gains no doubt a valuable addition to its members. But the newcomer can seldom be so well acquainted with the duties he has to discharge as some one or more of the Staff at the headship of which he is suddenly placed. Mr. Churchill tells us indeed that an admiral's experience affords no special knowledge for much of the work which the additional Civil Lord will have to do, and this is true on the face of it. But the Minute goes on to attribute the happy circumstance that this combina- tion of duties has led to no misadventure to " the handi- ness and diligence characteristic of the naval service." Put in different words this explanation comes to this ; One Third Sea Lord after another has been saddled with incompatible functions. The Government are now quite rightly of opinion that these functions must be separated, and that instead of a Sea Lord charged with both there shall be a Sea Lord to do the purely naval work and a Civil Lord to do the contract and purchasing work. But since both of these duties have hitherto been performed by the Third Sea Lord and his assistants it would seem only natural that among the latter there should be found some one capable of filling the place now assigned to Sir Francis Hopwood. We do not say that he would fill the place as well as the present occupant. Sir Francis Hopwood has, we readily admit, unusual capacities and unusual variety of training. But it is but poor encouragement to men who have had to do the work which the new Civil Lord will have to do, and to do it with the heavy drawback of being saddled with work of a wholly different kind, that they should all be passed over in place of a distinguished man from another office. The effect of a change of this kind on the office which is vacated has also to be considered. As the work of the Development Commission was thought important enough to deprive the Colonial Office of Sir Francis Hopwood's services it is hardly to be supposed that he had, as yet, done much more thanmake a pre- liminary plan of operations. But it is conceivable at least that to carry this plan into execution will demand. as much care and consideration as to mark it out ; and if so it seems unfortunate that its author should have been taken away before he has had time to see his design carried into execution. There have been eminent public servants who have declared that the results to which they have been able to point when their term came to an end would never have been obtained. if that term had not been extended. beyond. its original limit. When you have got a thoroughly good man in an import- ant place it is good policy to keep him in it. The appointment of Sir Francis Hopwood is in itself so unexceptionable that we should not have dreamed of making it a text for these remarks were it not that it is only an example of a tendency which seems likely to become common throughout the Civil Service. The preference which newspapers give to the personal element and the pains which they take to find out the men whom they suppose to be the real authors of this or that act of the. Executive Government have no doubt contributed to this change. None the less it is a change to be regretted, and the Parliamentary chiefs of the various offices would be well advised in discouraging any extension of it. It lies with them to determine whether to take the responsibility, of carrying out their orders as well as of issuing them, or to wash their hands of the consequences so soon as the subordinate to whom the order is given has left the Minister's room. There is a passage in Professor Lawrence Lowell's book, "The Government of England," which so exactly expresses our meaning that we shall make no apology for quoting it once more :— " The Minister alone is responsible for everything done in his department, and ho receives all the credit or all the blame. The Civil servant never talks in public about the policy of his depart- ment, never claims anything done there as his own work ; and, on the other hand, the Minister ought not to attribute blunders or misconduct to a subordinate unless prepared at the same time to announce his discharge. . . Fifty years ago the public was not aware of the power of the Civil servants, and Parliament, regard- ing them as clerks, paid little attention to them. But now that their importance has come to be understood, there is, in the opinion of some of their own members, a danger that they will be made too prominent, that the screen which protects them from the public gaze will be partly drawn aside, and that they will thereby lose their complete irresponsibility, and with it their permanence and their non-political character."
Previous page
