The Civil Service
THE severe punishment meted out by the Secretary • of State for Foreign Affairs to two members of the Foreign Office, with milder treatment towards a third, has come with no surprise to those who know how high a standard of integrity is there demanded. We venture to say that this could have happened in no other country. Someone else's gambling transactions coine to light in the Courts, transactions in which no Civil Servant is directly concerned at all. It happens, hOwever, that the -name of a friend who was mixed up in other similar business some three years earlier is dragged in, and he is a Civil Servant. Such is the jealousy for the honour of the Service that inquiry is at once set on foot, and to the credit' of all concerned nobody, not even those whose official life is at stake, hesitates to give all the information he can ; no word is heard of self-excuse or unworthy pleading. The rules and standards of conduct are revealed by the exception to be high and strictly kept. To keep them so- high the Foreign Office now loses two men who in all other respects can ill be spared. They were not yet " at the top of the tree " ; but both have done admirable work for the country ; both have excep- tional ability and•proved industry. Yet, for all our intense personal sympathy with them, we • say without hesitation that it is right that they should suffer for these raked-up errors. We -can .put it cynically, saying with Candide's friend that it is a good British habit to punish pour encourager lee autres, or we can use the old phrases that are entirely applicable about the need for public servants to be not only innocent but above suspicion. The Board of Inquiry in its long. Report, which should be studied by all who ,care about our public life, has put all this admirably, pointing out the need to discriminate between what is lawful and what is expedient for a public servant if his- Service is to keep the public confidence. The Board knows the delicacy and difficulty, and rightly says that ".the surest guide will, we hope, always be found in, the nice and jealous honour of the Civil Servants themselves." In Jeaving the reputation of the Civil Service in the hands of the Servants we have no qualms .due to any exceptional incident, however luridly presented. .
The ;whole, business would form a text for a common- place sermon- on gambling. The ruin of a weekly wage- earner's family may be traced to a shilling lost on a terrier racing after a mechanical rat, no great crime. A diplomat serving abroad may receive a cheque when in a country where the exchange is fluctuating and may hesitate whether to cash it to-day or to-morrow. There is no vice or, clime- there, but it might first direct his thoughts into gambling on the exchanges and so to the loss of money and eventually of his employment and livelihood., .We.:. distinguish between vice and crime, and know the danger of an employer, whether the State or a. fellow man, _acthig as a censor of vice or folly.. But gambling stands alone. in several ways. Long before it has reached a point where the ordinary man would nowadays call it vicious, gambling on exchanges or on the Turf engrosses a _ man's thoughts to the detriment of his work Miless it is purely manual labour. It opens up temptations. which justify the banks, for instance, in dismissing a clerk who _ is found to be laying himself open to any such temptations. In this case in the Foreign Office we are thankful that it is proclaimed that there is not the slightest suspicion of any dishonesty or corrupt action whatever. No one who knows the working of that Office ever supposed that it would be possible for a clerk to influence his speculation through his work or let his work be influenced by his speculation, But we can see how suspicion might easily arise and must, therefore, be avoided like the plague. The temptation of Civil Servants to add to their salaries is no new subject of discussion, and their low pay has been written of in the Press in connexion with this matter. The pay is none too high.; the compensations that are supposed to exist are not very tangible ones ; but these are not days when further increases can possibly be expected. We would only say on that matter that the temptation to seek extraneous additions is not lessened in the Foreign Office by the almost inevitable opening of its doors on democratic lines without nominations and by the abolition of the guarantee of a small private income.
As the notorious Zinovieff letter has been dragged out again into prominence we cannot ignore that serio-comic epiSode which is supposed to have so greatly influenced a general election. No one can say how much influence it really had, but if it had much it was peculiarly perverse. It may well have incensed Britons against Russians who seemed to be meddling with our private affairs. But why should it have turned a vote against the Labour Party when the incident proved that the Labour Prime Minister and Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs took drastic .and proper action on behalf of this country ? Why, again, should it give the Labour Party a grievance against the Foreign Office which acted with complete loyalty throughout towards its Chief ? The only explana- tion to these puziles may lie. in the searching for a cause of_ the turnover of votes by persons ignorant of whit would have happened in the newspaper world if there had been no action or publication by the Foreign Office. There it was known .what political use would have been made elsewhere of the letter. From that use the Foreign- Office loyally saved the Government.. The . The whole matter must cause sorrow; to many on personal grounds, but the country may well be of good cheer to find that its responsible servants are subject to such close scrutiny that the heaviest:punislunent falls with a truly Roman severity, though pede &ludo as hi this case, upon • any who through wrongdoing .Or . . . culpahle folly bring the least breath of suspicion upon their. Service. The country honours its servants by expecting of them a higher standard of disinteresied devotion than e. to' e would ho r any othe country woupxact • ..;
Previous page
