6 NOVEMBER 1920, Page 12

BUREAUCRACY AND SALARIES.

[To THE EDITOR Or THE "SPECTATOR.") SIR,—A few more comments on bureaucracy and salaries. One must concur that the real Civil Service is generally to be com- mended, but the service is now so expanded that, briefly, some of the Departments are gigantic factories where a few arm- chaired administrative officers are surrounded by an army corps of cyphers whose brains are sucked generally or they just 'carry on." Hence "A" opens a letter and Passes it to "B," who sticks a stamp on it and some relevant scrawl as to the file number, and so on and forth. It is sheer waste of man- hood the work some men are doing! What is wanted is smaller staffs and every man doing something, as a responsible man should do, for his living—Administration, not Administrative Officers and cyphers. Small wonder that at the stroke of five o'clock the crush of employees rushing out of these factories is suggestive of the well-known story " Lases " and the perils of a wild stampede, whilst the loafing about in work hours bespeaks the mind of those who toil not, neither do they in-