[To THE EDITOR OW THE "SPROTATOR:]
Sin,—Was not your article on " The Cant of Efficiency " in your issue of October 28th a little tortuous P Did not it set up a bogey only to knock it down P It would have made the article a little more concrete if you had mentioned who it was that regards "efficiency as an object in itself," and who it is that desires efficiency to stop short before it "rises to a higher plane of life." Most of us have no chance to live on " mountain heights," and heights reached by granite " setts," as you seem to suggest, would be a little dreary. No, one with any public responsibility, so far as I am aware, has set up efficiency as an idol. It is known to everybody that Lord Rosebery has taken the word "efficiency" as the motto of the Liberal League. For what purpose has he done it ? For selfish reasons P To secure office P To make wealth P Not at all. With a passion of heart known to all who have consistently read his speeches, he urges that efficiency shall be the keynote of administrative life, so that the hungry sheep shall no longer look up and be not fed. He has realised as keenly as any statesman of the day that our people have not made any progress in the art of living to correspond with the progress made in the mechanical arts during the last century. And so when he looks back upon the years of the Tory record he exclaims :—" Never were such power and such opportunity combined in any hands. They had such as a Caesar, or a Cromwell, or a Romanoff might have envied. What have they done with it? Looking back over the last seven years, what are they as regards the highest and truest needs of the people P Years lost for all social and human causes; years lost for all measures making for national health and national efficiency."—(March 10th, 1902.) Does a man who speaks like that make efficiency a means only P Does he make it an idol P Is that spirit a "thing of wood and stone without life or spirit "P What are state- ments like these but a plea for efficiency, " not for its own sake, but in order to rise to a higher plane of life " P Your mistake, I think, was in not defining terms or men at the outset. Mr. Morley made no such mistake. He went for Lord Rosebery, and is entitled to his own opinion as to the need for efficiency. But in the case of the Spectator one does not expect it to take the "cant" of irresponsible people
seriously, and to father such "cant" upon responsible people who have no more respect for cant than your journal. One has only to turn to the meeting of the British Science Guild on October 30th to see what the real advocates of efficiency are wanting. Mr. Haldane, the president of the Guild, declared at the meeting that when the Liberals went out of office ten years ago "he looked out for something to do," and turned his band to the efficient co-ordination of the higher education of the country. Surely that is a surer way of reaching "mountain heights" than by granite roads. By all means let us have ideals—the more the better—but do not let those who are fundamentally agreed waste powder and shot by meaningless sniping at each other. This is my last shot.
am, Sir, &o., A TOILING WOULD-BE EFFICIENT.
[Our correspondent is entirely mistaken if he thinks our remarks were in any way aimed at Lord Rosebery, or were intended to endorse any attack upon him. We merely wished to give a warning which we feel sure Lord Rosebery would be the first to support,—namely, that the cry of efficiency, if it is reduced to a mere abstraction, may become not a help but a danger.—ED. Spectator.]
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