MARGINAL COMMENT
By HAROLD NICOLSON
I- HAVE acquired the habit during the last twenty years of assuming that when Mr. R. A. Butler thinks about something he is probably right. I therefore read with the respect that I accord to all his plans and pronouncements the statement that, in future, Civil Servants would not normally be retired at the age of 60. I felt sure that, to any mind less obtuse than my own, this decision to retain 10,000 Civil Ser- vants was not incompatible with the simultaneous decision to dismiss 10,000 Civil Servants; that each of these two devices was designed in some subtle way to dilute our man-power, to close the dollar gap, and to preserve our English pound. I regretted that Mr. White, the general secretary of the Civil Service Association, should immediately have proclaimed that all Civil Servants under 60 would " deeply resent " Mr. Butler's desire to spare the decrepit; surely, Mr. White feels, the hungry generations should be allowed, without interference, to tread the dotards down. I remain on Mr. Butler's side, since I know how calm and wise he is. But I, shotild be glad to learn, at some later stage, how he intends to create this bird sanctuary and how he is to choose the right birds. I do not really believe that any of us are much good after 35, nor do I quite agree that what is so valuable about the age group of 60-65 is its " weight of experience." Surely any sensible Civil Servant has already, by the age of 30, acquired all the experience that is good for him. He has learnt the subtle gradations of manner that he should adopt towards the clerical staff, his junior col- leagues, his senior colleagues, the head of his department, the Assistant Under-Secretary, the Permanent Under-Secretary, the office keepers and even the Secretary of State. He has learnt that all other Government Offices should be regarded with contempt, with the sole exception of the Treasury, whose Officers should be approached with wary but unctuous awe. He has learnt that very few things in life can be said " to serve any useful purpose "; that unimportant problems do not matter, whereas the important ones invariably settle themselves. He has learnt that the golden rule for every Civil Servant is to smile readily, to minute his papers tidily, never to create pre- cedents, and to obliterate mistakes.
What experience more valuable than this can those of the 60-65 age group add ? Nothing at all. For the last 40 years they have been obliterating mistakes even as they were taught to do when they first entered the office in 1910. In extreme cases it may occur even that the weight of experience has weighed them down; that they have lost the old April rapture and dash; even that they have begun—a sinister symptom—to believe that unimportant things are not invariably unimportant and that important matters do not always settle themselves quite right. They may have lost, as the mists of eld descend upon them, the healthy fear of Parliamentary Questions, the instinctive reverence for Members of the House of Commons (and even of the House of Lords) which proved such an inspir- ation to them in the years before the First World War. They ma, ty even have retained from Edwardian days a certain punctiliousness regarding the handling of their native language; it is a sure sign of sclerosis when senior Civil Servants refuse to admit the pretty turns of phrase that the Welfare State has standardised; when they cross out crossly such natty words as " nostalgic " or " implement " or raise senile objections to sen- tences that begin with the words " in the circumstances " or in the case of." Surely, Mr. Butler, such men should go.
* * * * I observe that in their statement the Treasury have left them- selves some powers of discrimination. It seems that the men over 60 are to be vetted at recurrent intervals, in order to make certain that their " standard of efficiency "'is not on the decline. I am fascinated by this proposition. Who, I wonder, is to do the vetting ? It would be a moving experience for these old boys to return to Burlington House and to face the Civil Ser- vice Commissioners in the same room in which they had sat as shaking youngsters 41 years ago. Or will they be sent down in batches to spend a week-end at Stoke d'Abernon, while the sharp eyes of psycho-analysts, disguised as under- gardeners and hidden among the rhododendrons. watch their every movement for symptoms of decline ? The Secretary of State ought of course himself to assess day by day the incidence of decrepitude in his senior staff; but the Secretary of State is all too frequently a busy man and shy. He will leave the task to his Private Secretaries, who may be wicked men. Or he may delegate the duty of supervision to that Department which, in our modern world, is called by a name that is almost too atrocious to employ. How came- it that in this literate island, among a nation which has produced the prose of Dryden and Walter Savage Landor. in a country whose Parliaments have cherished purists such as Sir Alan Herbert and Mr. Henry Strauss—how came it, I ask, that our Civil Service should have adopted for their staff the abominable appellation of " Personnel " ? Will it be to the Personnel Departments of the several Ministries that will be entrusted the responsibility of seeing that the men of the 60-65 age-group do not go off their heads or legs ? Surely this raises possibilities of embarrass- ment.
It is a distressing thought that the eminent Civil Servant of 62, who until two years ago was placid in his dignity, serene in his authority, should suddenly have to conciliate the whims of some stripling in his own Personnel Department. It is a terrible thought that, when he feels the eyes of one of these invigilators upon him, he will strive to conceal the inelasticity of his move- ments, or the deficiencies of his ears and eyes. Walking back from luncheon through St. James's Park he will observe a member of the Personnel Department eyeing him from beside the lake; he will at once impart to his umbrella a nonchalant twirl, he will square his shoulders and gaze up at the blue sky with a Frahlingserwachung smile, he will prance as he approaches the watching member of the Personnel Department with all the happy uplift of one of Dr. Buchman's followers. Even if, On getting nearer, he discovers that after all what ho had supposed to be a snooping member of the Personnel Department was just a pelican preening. the effort will have been made, the humiliation occasioned. Public servants with years of duty behind them should not be exposed to such charades. Will the test applied by Mr. Butler and his Treasury satraps be intellectual tests as well as physical 7 Will the old men be asked to write essays, to do sums, or to typewrite from dictation ? Were I exposed to such examinations, I should fail. I have long since forgotten, thank heavens, even the simplest rules or arithmetic, and would not, if asked, know even how to begin to divide 5879482 by 446. Typing, on the other hand, is one of my major accomplishments; I do it with a brio that is all my own. I have been told that careless typing is one of the earliest signs of senescence and I fear that were I to typo, in my quick way, " usuryAert " for " Treasury " the examiners would be displeased.
* * * * Mr. Butler assures us that to those who are not permitted, owing to mental or physical decay, to maunder on after 60 " no stigma will be attached." Were I a Civil Servant of ripe old age I should not, I think, wish to expose myself to such scrutiny; I should not risk any stigma not being attached. OS I should go to Torquay and draw my pension quietly and grow my tulips. Virtuous, I should feel, at such renunciation. I should be pleasing Mr. L. C. White, of the Civil Service Association, and Mr. T. R. Jones of the Civil Service National Whitley Council. I should, if I may quote the former, " be easing a bad promotion situation." I should be behaving well.
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