Dwellers on Olympus
The Higher Civil Service of Great Britain. By H. E. Dale, C.B. (Oxford University Press. los.)
MR. DALE has not produced the perfect, dispassionate, bureau- cratic study of a problem because, to use his own words, his is a composition " where luckily official caution is not a primary virtue." He has deliberately suppressed those qualifications which, every civil servant would agree, spoil official style, but which form essential cover in an unending future in which the written word remains, to be periodically disinterred and used against the writer. The result is to increase the literary attraction of what is a very lucid, very fair description of that inner circle, wherein lies the real control of that administrative machine which takes a mildly paternal interest in almost everything we do from birth to death. Not all his generation will agree with all the views he expresses. If one looks at the series of professional politicians who have successfully shirked their responsibilities during the last decade, does one get a clear impression of a measurable advance in intellect and character over, say, the Salisbury Government of 1895 or its Liberal successor of ten years later? And I, for one, would be extremely surprised if a conference with any number of the bluest-blooded Cabinet Ministers, educated at Eton and Harrow, Trinity and Balliol, would induce the slightest sense of inferiority in an Anderson, a Bradbury or a Niemeyer—to quote three of my own generation mentioned by name in the book.'
Still, these are matters of opinion, and Mr. Dale never fails to differentiate dearly between the facts he records and the opinions he fathers. I cannot claim ever to have entered the charmed circle of the "Higher Civil Service" as defined by him, but have hovered on its fringe from time to time, and I know enough of its working to be certain that the description given is, in all essentials, an accurate one, even if I think the writer tends to underestimate the real, as distinct from the nominal, power of the bureaucracy.
Mr. Dale would give a couple of " long leaves " in the Higher Civil Servant's life—to broaden his outlook and freshen his contact with non-bureaucratic humanity. He would curli—mildly —the growing influence of the, Secretary to the Treasury on all the major appointments, and then, apparently, all would be for the best in a very good bureaucratic world. He thinks that the per- manent Civil Service may emerge " not fundamentally altered " from the tempest.of the present war. His optimism (or his com- placency) may well be justified. Much will depend upon how the war ends, how far the community will want to call to account those who share the responsibility for the narrowness of the margin between survival and destruction, and how convincing are to be the guarantees against the same risks being run again. Adequate guarantees will surely entail some modification in the system under which the Higher Civil Service is almost a self- created, self-renewed body, dominated by its titular head, who, during the last two decades at any rate, would hardly have denied that the first quality looked for in potential .Permanent Secre- taries is a highly developed instinct for avoiding political trouble, and that known zeal for any particular line of progress would be a disqualification rather than not.
This is an attitude defensible enough in a nearly perfect world. It has very definite drawbacks in a world in which nasty fellows like Hitler and Mussolini insist on making perfect nuisances of themselves at the cost of millions of lives. Its logical outcome is cleaily ptiinted by Mr. Dale :
" The first duty of the high official, -as of every other civil servant, is to serve his Minister."
" It might be said, cynically, but with some measure of truth, that the perfect reply to an embarrassing question in the House of Commons is one that is brief, appears to answer the auestion completely . . and discloses really nothing."
And it is to be supposed that, if the major policy Of the Government required the public to think that essential means of defence are " accruing " to us as fast as to our declared enemies, it was the bounden duty of every high official so to present the facts as to convey this false impression. This is a crude way of putting it, and few Higher Civil servants and no Permanent Secre- taries are ever crude. However delicately the facts may have been wrapped up, something very like this has characterised the poli- tical and administrative life of the last ten years. The Higher Civil Service may possibly be allowed to exercise its ingenuity in drafting the terms of its technical acquittal, but, surely, only on condition of undertaking to take a completely new view of its fundamental duties and responsibilities. THOMAS LODGE.
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