LETTERS TO THE EDITOR.
[Letters of the length of one of our leading paragraphs are often more read,and therefore more effective, than those which fill treble the space.]
"JUSTICE FOR TLIE CIVIL SERVANT."
[To TEE EDITOR or me " SPECTATOR."] SIR,—The article on "Justice for the Civil Servant" in your issue for August 13th is one of the best informed and most illuminating statements I have seen on the question. I believe. most emphatically that the old Civil Service is not to blame for the present state of things, which is due (1) to the weak- ness of the Government; (2) to tornado campaigns in the Press. It is noticeable that the newspapers which now so fiercely attack waste in Government offices are in most cases the same that during the war led the insistent clamour that every department of human activity should be taken over by the State. They are themselves mainly responsible for the exist- ence of those swollen staffs of improvised ministries, by glee- fully attacking which they now win a cheap and totally undeserved reputation for economizing zeal. But at the same time we cannot exonerate the Government. In the Times of J-une 10th we read, in the debate on the increased postal charges : "Mr. Chamberlain remarked that the worst economy would be to underpay the most responsible Civil Servants. They were formerly underpaid." If this is the best answer that can be given to the popular demand for greater economy, it is not surprising that the country gives verdicts like those recorded at recent by-elections. The question that the British people are insistently putting to Mr. Chamberlain, the question to which they cannot extract an answer either from him or any- one else, is: " Why do you choose this particular time of all times, not only to grant a cost-of-living bonus, which in the case of highly paid officials is nothing less than a scandal, but
also to introduce a higher scale of pay altogether? " Mr. Chamberlain can only reply, in slightly injured and reproachful tones, as above.
Just consider the facts. For many years before the war Civil Servants had been given a certain rate of remuneration. They were apparently content; nay, more, the conditions of their employment were attractive enough to draw into their ranks the cream of the highly educated youth of cur universities. We obtained the very best men in the open market of human ability. I yield to no one in my admira- tion for the high character and splendid capacity of the personnel of our Civil Service. Moreover, all these years Mr. Chamberlain and his colleagues do not appear, so far as I can discover, to have expressed any particular anguish at the alleged under-payment of Government officials. Then came the war with all its attendant loss and ruin. The Civil Servants are granted a generous bonus to compensate them for the rise in the cost of living. To my mind the whole theory of a war bonus is logically indefensible. Certainly the only classes to whom it should have been granted are those who
live on the very margin of subsistence, and that on the ground that the State must attempt to save its citizens from starva- tion even at some sacrifice of economic orthodoxy and logical consistency. All other classes—and remember that many have never had any other choice—ought to have been expected to bear their share of the burden of the war. The hypercritical might even add that, since war means essentially the bank- ruptcy of administration and the art of government, those engaged in the administrative service of the State ought to have been by rights not the last, but the first, to suffer. Further, the Government have lately found it to be their painful duty to call upon labourers to accept lower wages than they have hitherto enjoyed. It was hard enough to have to do this in all conscience, and only possible, one would have thought, if they had been able to show that all men must share in the sacrifice. Yet this is the time they choose not only for raising the scale of the larger' stipends in the Civil Service, but for putting forward their outrageous proposals to exempt Members of Parliament from Income Tax and grant them first-class railway fares. Within the last few months three highly placed Civil Servants have told me that, through the cost-of-living bonus plus a higher scale of remuneration adopted since the war, their positions both relatively and absolutely are better than they would have been had the war never taken place. I know they regret it, and would willingly have it otherwise. I believe it to be a fact that in one important Government office the higher permanent officials most honourably and disinterestedly voted against an enhanced scale of salaries submitted to them by the Treasury, but that they were overruled by the Minister at the head of the Depart- ment.
When historians come to reckon up the sins of our post 1914 Governments, not the least will probably be that they have needlessly aroused the popular fury against a Civil Service which has been the most honoured, the ablest, and the purest in the world. It is, perhaps, a fitting achievement for men who— however amiable their intentions—have never had the courage to say no to specious importunities, who have never really relied upon patriotism of the people, whose conduct sometimes seems to hint that they do not ultimately trust the allegiance of the armed forces of the Crown. Pretentious social reforms which we cannot afford, war bonuses, allowances, inflated wages, roiled subsidies, cajoleries, promises, bribes—these arc the nethods they have chosen to lead an imperial people through the dark places of the Valley of War and Death. Even their psychology is curiously at fault. There are hardly any heights to which human nature cannot rise (as our soldiers and sailors have taught us) if the call to sacrifice is made clearly and con- fidently. There are hardly any depths to which it will not sink if material benefits and worldly prosperity are the motives to which you limit your appeal.—I am, Sir, &c., P. E. ROBERTS. Huelgoat, Finistere, France, August 15th.
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