THE CANT OF EFFICIENCY.
1VIR. MORLEY ran no small risk of being mis- understood in regard to what he said at Arbroath on Monday on the subject of efficiency, and to risk mis- understanding is never wise in a statesman. Nevertheless, we cannot help a strong feeling of sympathy with him in his protest against the newest political fashion. There has been so much cant preached about efficiency during the last three or four years that we are not surprised at finding a man of the intellectual sensitiveness of Mr. Morley turning from such talk in disgust. Efficiency is a thing, not a word, and there is a very real danger of the public bemusing themselves with the opium of the word and letting the thing go unregarded. By its very nature, true efficiency is most present when it is least talked about. So true is this, indeed, that grave men have come to regard a parade of rhetoric about efficiency as a sure sign that it does not exist. Mr. Spenlow talking about the absolute necessity for every man to make a clear testamentary disposition of his property and to put his affairs in exact order, and then dying without a will,, is a parable that has an almost universal application. How often do we hear people insist on the necessity for method and the prime need for absolute perfection in all the details of life, and then find them living and working in a condition of turbid dis- organisation.
But though the cant about efficiency is not only dis- gusting but dangerous, because it teaches men, to drug themselves with words, and imagine that they have done something when they have prated about the need of making tthings effective, it is not the only danger con- nected with the craze of the moment. Efficiency, though a good. thing and a necessary thing when it is the right kind of efficiency, is also liable to bring great perils in its train, even when it is most perfect, unless it is moralised and inspired by higher motives. The truth is, efficiency is a means, not an end, an instrument and not an object in itself. Hence, if we put up naked efficiency on a pedestal and worship it, we shall be worshipping a thing of wood and stone without life or spirit, and must inevitably reap the reward of those who bow down to idols into which the breath of the divine has not entered. It is only when efficiency is the servant and instrument of what is noble and of good report, when it is finely touched to fine issues, when it is employed in what in the widest sense we may call the work of God, that it is worth men's admiration. We must never forget that this potent instrument when employed for unworthy or non-moral ends may prove a curse instead of a, blessing, and that just as there is a progress towards darkness as well as a progress towards light, so there is an efficiency which makes for evil as well as that which makes for good. As Mr. Morley well pointed out, Napoleon was one of the most efficient men who ever lived, and yet he was the scourge of Europe. His efficiency only enabled him to intensify the miseries that his evil deeds and evil intentions brought upon mankind. The philosopher of opportunism in his state- ment of the principles of government shows that efficiency is the best weapon which the tyrant can use to bring a community under his power and organise it as " the negation of God erected into a system." The virtu. which Machiavelli commends to the Prince in order to maintain his State in power and strength is in effect nothing but efficiency. If, then, we call for mere efficiency in season and out of season, we may be working for what will prove a danger, not a help, to the State. And let those who are inclined to scoff at the introduction of moral considerations into government, and to declare that in the Senate House as in the mart " Business is business " is the only safe motto, remember that no nation organised with a view to efficiency and nothing else has ever lasted. Mr. Morley has spoken of Napoleon. We may further instance the Roman Empire. During the reign of Hadrian the Empire had become efficient beyond the dreams of the most perfect organiser, and yet it was doomed :— "Stout was its arm, each thew and bone
Seemed puissant and alive.
But ah I its heart, its heart was stone, And so it could not thrive."
All its pride and pomp, all its power, all its magnificence of organisation, availed it nothing, because it cared not for the things of the spirit, but worshipped only the stocks and stones of a dread-inspiring efficiency. It was, in truth, this cold, unmoralised, inhuman efficiency which weighed so heavy upon the heart of the greatest and best of the later Emperors, and made him the most melancholy and heart- oppressed of mankind. Marcus Aurelius cared for the things of the spirit, and not for those of the material world, and we see in his "Meditations," though. he himself was only dimly conscious of it, that the service of the idol of efficiency, to whom the irony of fate had made him high priest, was a burden almost beyond endurance.
Undoubtedly we want efficiency for the Empire and for these islands, if by efficiency is meant the abandonment'of idleness and sloth, and the placing of the ideal of duty before those of comfort and prosperity. But our efficiency must be informed and inspired by something higher than the desire to possess a more perfect machine, —one that will make money more quickly or spend it to better advantage. We want efficiency, not for its own sake, but in order to rise to a higher plane of life. Hence we must never forget that efficiency is a means, not an end, and that if we regard. it as an end all virtue will go out of it. It was finely said by Archbishop Whately that though honesty is the best policy, he is not an honest man who is honest for that reason. So we may say that though efficiency makes nations great, no nation will ever be great that puts efficiency before itself as its one object. Efficiency may be the best policy, but no man is really efficient who pursues efficiency for that reason. It is but a dead thing when it is not vitalised by moral ideas. When, then, Mr. Morley tells us that a free, democratic, self- governing community must not think only of efficiency, he has our heartiest sympathy. When, however, he adds that what is wanted is not efficiency in Whitehall, but will and driving-power, we must ask whether he is not himself losing touch with his own ideal. It is true that he went on to say that these things could only come from a resolute and determined adherence in the minds and hearts of the people in the country to the claims of humanity, justice, and freedom ; but surely will and driving-power, being in themselves but instruments, may easily be made into as false a god and as lifeless an idol as mere efficiency. What men must remember is to have aims, aspirations, and ideals—and those of the highest—and. never to allow the neutral instrument by which those aims, aspirations, and ideals can be achieved. to be substituted for them. There always has been in the past, and there will always be in the future, an effort among mankind in favour of such substitution. It is far easier and pleasanter to worship the instrument which is not quickened, and cannot quicken, than that which is truly divine. When we wor- ship what is lifeless and mechanical we need fear no uneasy prickings of conscience, nor those restless calls which the spirit of duty makes upon the unwilling flesh. Idol worship of every kind is a comfortable religion. The worship of the true divinity brings, in truth, not peace, but a sword. Therefore human nature, • being sluggish, idle, and inert, is always trying, even when it starts with a sound ideal, to stop by the way, to turn aside, and to erect an altar of wood and stone to some visible and tangible idol,—an idol which it hopes will protect it from the weariness, anxiety, and often the pain, that are the heritage of those who worship the true God. To take a homely metaphor, we want the granite of efficiency to pave our road to the mountain heights ; but we must use it for its proper purpose, and not carve it into a lifeless idol for our worship. If men ignore its true use, and bow before it as a, god, the idol in the end will fall upon its worshippers and crush them into dust.
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