MARGINAL COMMENT
By HAROLD NICOLSON
NOW that demobilisation is in full swing and that the age and service groups of the Bevin scheme are being released with commendable rapidity, there are two words which rise to heaven in varying degrees of anger or vituperation, mortification or con- tempt. One hears them muttered in clubs and restaurants, or cried aloud in undergrounds and trains. They are the two words "Red Tape." I have the deepest sympathy for those veterans of SEAC or the C.M.F. who, on arriving in England, are sent from Liverpool to London and then back again via Yorkshire or Notting- ham to their appropriate demobilisation centres. Nobody can pretend that modern conditions of transport furnish any rest for tired limbs, and it is inevitable that men who have to stand for five or six hours in a congested corridor should ask with undisguised petulance whether their journey is really necessary. At the same time, all those whom I have consulted admit that when they arrive at their centres the subsequent proceedings are short and sharp ; and that when at last they pass out into the free air, carrying with them a carefully selected civilian wardrobe, they are conscious that much forethought and considerable organisation has contributed to their maintenance and comfort. It is natural, none the less, that any individual should judge administrative regulations from the angle of his own personal circumstances, and that he should be enraged, if his own home happens to be near his port of dis- embarkation, at being trundled north and east in search of his appropriate demobilisation centre. It is no solace at all to him to reflect that he is but one of a category of many thousands, and that if efficiency and equity are to be preserved it is essential that each category should be dealt with similarly and in a bunch. His anger is concerned, not with the quality or colour of the tape itself, but with the fact that an ungrateful country does not accord to his personal circumstances that special consideration which he imagines they deserve.
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