THE PETTY OFFICIAL.
ACONSIDERABLE section of the public has been startled by the revelations of the methods employed by the Army Clothing Department at Pimlico; but those who have watched the ways of bureaucracy in this as in other countries will feel that there is no occasion for any surprise. What happened at Pimlico might happen in a greater or less degree in almost any Government Department in the United Kingdom, and still more in France or Italy. In making this statement it is not meant for a moment to suggest that any considerable proportion of the permanent officials in this country or in the countries of our neighbours and Allies are corrupt. Neither is it true that any considerable proportion of the officials at Pimlico are corrupt. Probably the large majority are scrupulously honest. The real curse of the bureaucracy in all countries is that the precautions taken to prevent dishonesty are so elaborate that in practice they can rarely be trusted to work. In the Pimlico case it was given in evidence that certain documents had to be initialled by some twenty separate officials, none of whom ever read the documents to which they appended their signatures. Exactly the same thing happens in other Government Departments. It may safely be said that at the present moment there are several hundreds of persons in the United Kingdom, some of them drawing quite substantial salaries, who spend their whole time in signing or initialling documents which they never read. From every practical point of view these persons are absolutely useless to their country. Worse than that, they are an obstruction, because the necessity of obtaining all these signatures—and in some cases the same official has to sign his name several times on the same document—causes delay, while it suggests precautions which do not in reality exist.
The evil of course is not a new one, but hitherto this country has been relatively better off than most Continental countries. The French people for generations have been accustomed to a bureaucratic system of government. Until the present war gave a new turn to the thoughts of the nation, the ambition of almost every young Frenchman was to get some kind of post in a Government office. The same evil exists to a perhaps even greater extent in Italy. It is there complicated by the racial divisions of the country. The Southern Italian takes to politics with the same zest that the Irishman does, with the result that Southern Italy has a disproportionate influence over the Italian Government, and is therefore able to secure a disproportionate share of the plums, big and little, which the Government can dispose of in the way of bureau- cratic appointments. Consequently the active business men of Northern Italy find their operations hampered at almost every turn by insignificant jacks-in-office born in Southern Italy, and with no experience of business methods or of business needs.
The tendencies in our own country are unfortunately all in the same direction. The legislation of the last ten or fifteen years has involved a tremendous increase in the bureaucracy. The outward and visible sign of it is apparent in the great blocks of Government buildings in Whitehall, many of them now sheltering hundreds of young men who ought to be serving their country in the field. There is no necessity to blame either political party or any particular group of poli- ticians for this multiplication of petty officials. It seems to be a common feature of all democracies. Probably the explanation is that the average man of the artisan or of the underpaid clerical class looks upon a small berth in a Govern- ment office as a means of escape from the uncertainty of ordinary civilian life. In a Government office he is sure of regular pay week in and week out (with few or no deductions in cases of illness), of regular holidays, and of a pension at the end of his period of service. To a man who wishes to obtain security for his life such a form of employment is a godsend. But the very fact that the main recommendation for this type of employment is its regularity and security tends to repel the more energetic elements in the population, with the result that the unenterprising, timid, and rather limited man becomes a public official, and as such is able to exercise control over the energetic man who remains in private life. A witty French writer once said that the ideal of the French bureaucrat was to stand at the end of a long passage and say, : " On no passe pas." The petty official is, in truth, the grand obstructor.
That is also the ideal of the English bureaucrat. It is not his function to create ; it is his function to forbid. His main r6le consists in seeing that certain prescribed forms are carried out before things can be done, and he knows by experience that he will be free from censure as long as he adheres to this limited reils. In effect all he has to do is to say that things shall not be done until the prescribed forms are complied with. In other words, he is a check on progress, not an instru- ment of progress. People who have been at all behind the scenes in the present organization of the Army know how seriously these bureaucratic checks have prevented prompt action. Happily, the instinct of the individual Englishman has in many cases triumphed over the obstruction of the bureaucrat. Men eager to get things done have invented all sorts of short-cuts by which the end can be achieved without passing through the official routine. The telephone has proved of priceless value for this purpose, and often matters of the greatest importance have been settled in two or three minutes' conversation over the telephone, while the official papers relating to them have gone lumbering round office after office, to turn up perhaps six months after the job has been done.
Meanwhile the examining, signing, and filing of all these papers have provided employment and pay for multitudes of petty officials. They have been content, and their superiors have also been content. For it is necessary to face the fact that though many of the higher officials in the bureaucracy hate the system which they are compelled to work, and realize how seriously the growth of bureaucracy is impeding the progress of the country, yet in their own individual interest they find themselves compelled not merely to tolerate that system but actually to extend it. The explanation is very simple. The traditions of the Service provide that, with rare exceptions, no man can draw a high salary unless he is in charge of a large Department. Consequently the pecuniary interest of all the upper officials is to multiply their sub- ordinates in order to add to their own importance and to their own prospects of increased pay and improved status. That many officials do resist this temptation is highly to their credit, but the temptation remains, and a good many succumb to it.
There is another aspect of the bureaucracy which is hardly realized outside Government offices--namely, the persistent rivalry between different Departments. From the moral point of view it is impossible altogether to condemn this spirit. In the case of regiments in the Army we call it esprit de corps ; but soldiers will sometimes confess that even regimental esprit de corps has on occasion con- flicted with the general success of an Army. In the case of the Civil Service there is no corresponding reason to justify the establishment of a Departmental esprit de corps, and its existence is almost purely noxious to the whole community. Great Departments will spend days and weeks and months fighting with one another for a particular point, while the public interest is being either neglected or stifled. In the end both Departments generally contrive to gain by the struggle they have maintained, for the conflict between them has kept a number of clerks busy at the publio expense for a considerable period, and this extra employ- ment is pleaded as justification for a subsequent demand for an increase in staff in both Departments.
How the evil is to be dealt with it is not easy to see. The first step, at any rate, is to awaken the country as a whole to the consciousness of what is silently going on. The bureau- cracy in this country is steadily extending its grip over every branch of national life, and as it extends its operations it in- creases the number of persons who are interested in this ex- tension because their own employment depends upon it. There is thus set up a powerful organization, or group of organiza- tions, whose interest is directly opposed to the interest of the nation as a whole. But these organizations are compact ; they are able to bring pressure to bear, either politically or privately, upon the Government, and are thus able to move on step by step, while the public has no effective means of re- sisting their advance. The only hope of reform lies in the advent of some courageous politician or group of politicians who will put the country's interest above the interest of the permanent official ; but until the public itself is alive to the danger and begins to demand reform there is little hope of the appearance of any such politicians.
Previous page
