[To THE EDITOR OF THE " SPECTATOR.'9
Sts,—Your article in the last number under the heading "Bureaucracy and Salaries," based, as you admit, on a state- ment lacking in authenticity, is calculated to create a totally erroneous impression in the minds of others like your corre- Ns:indent who base their conclusions upon inaccurate state- ments. Civil Servants have not the power to "place them- selves" upon any salary basis. The scheme under which they receive one-twenty-sixth additional war bonus for every rise of full five points in the cost of living was recommended by the Arbitration Board upon the evidence placed before them by the various Staff Associations on the one side and the Govern- ment's representative on the other.
Your correspondent omitted to tell you that Civil Servants received little or no war bonus before 1918. and that in con- sequence they were compelled to show that "wonderful adaptability of the human being who means to pay his way somehow" at the expense of the comfort and well-being of their families. Nor did your correspondent inform you that the bonus, which is not salary but an allowance in aid to meet the admitted increased cost of living, is subject to Income Tax, and that the full value of the bonus is not therefore felt. Civil Servants, like the majority of middle-class people, do not want the war bonus. They would much i refer that the cost
of living should be reduced to the pre-war level. The war bonus, generous as your correspondent considers it, does not bring the Civil Servant's salary up to pre-war purchasing level, and it is much to be regretted that the Spectator, which has a reputation for fairness, should publish an article—which is an ill-deserved libel on a not undeserving body of public servants—on such slender and unreliable evidence.—I am, Sir, dc., ONN OF THEM. P.S.—The Spectator showed that "wonderful adaptability" by increasing its price when it was no longer possible to carry on at the old price.
[Our correspondent has done an injustice to our ergo- ment. We naturally have no objection to Civil Servants being paid as much as they deserve, or alternatively as much as the State can afford. What we object to is the method by which salaries are determined at a time when the admirable old Civil Service has swollen into a great bureaucracy. It is surely a wrong method to give Civil Servants a direct interest in the rise of the Index Figure.—En. Spectator.]
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