The Civil Service Hierarchy
MAJOR LEGGE-BOURKE takes his title rather neatly from a passage ifs Gibbon, which, referring to the year 324 A.D. (Constantine being then Emperor), states that "the principal administration of public affairs is committed to the diligence and abilities of the master of the offices." Who, asks Major Legge-Bourke in effect, is that functionary tOday but the Permanent Secretary to the Treasury, who, in his capacity as Head of the Civil Service, has ultimate con- trol over the appointment of all civil servants, including actual or potential heads of departments and with the obvious danger that a civil servant with hopes of advancement will be at some pains to avoid pursuing policies which he thinks may be distasteful to the Head of the Service ?
Is this, in fact, a serious danger, and did the experience of the Foreign Office between the wars demonstrate that danger as decisively as Major Legge-Bourke suggests ? That there was some danger is indicated by Mr. Eden's successful endeavours to get Foreign Office appointments removed completely from the purview of the Permanent Secretary to the Treasury. That was in 1942. Major Legge-Bourke avers that before that, in the years between the wars, " the Head of the Civil Service was a designation that caused grave confusion in the working of our Foreign Office, lead-
ing eventually to our entering war unprepared and almost friendless in. Europe." This is strong language, and it cannot be said that Major Legge-Bourke succeeds in justifying it. He makes consider- able play with a difference of opinion between two Ambassadors, Sir Neville Henderson -at Berlin and Sir Watford Selby at Vienna, in 1927, but he does not establish his allegation that this was in some way due to the existence of a Permanent Head of the Civil Service. The implication possibly, though it is not made clear, is that Sir Neville Henderson was taking orders from the Prime Minister, Mr. Chamberlain, and Sir Walford Selby from the Foreign Secretary, and that the Prime Minister had chosen to take as his adviser on foreign affairs Sir Horace Wilson, who was Permanent Secretary of the Treasury. But since Major Legge-Bourke depends largely on a conversation between Sir Neville Henderson and Von Papen on June 1st, 1937, when Chamberlain had only been Prime Minister for three days, the implication,cannot carry much weight.
That Mr. Chamberlain's decision to take foreign affairs into his own hands was disastrous, and that his choice of Sir Horace Wilson as personal adviser was perverse and unfortunate, need not be denied": But it has never been contended, and Major Legge-Bourke does not argue, that Sir Horace was selected as adviser in his capacity as Head of the Civil' Service. The one important change made at the Foreign Office in the Chamberlain period was the sub- stitution of Sir Alexander Cadogan for Lord Vansittart as Permanent Under Secretary. Discussion of that change raises personal questions, but Major Legge-Bourke would hardly be likely to contend that it was necessarily a change for the worse. In any case, all this is past history, since the Permanent Secretary has, since 1944, had nothing to do with appointments at the Foreign Office. But Major Legge. Bourkehas a second contention—that there should be much closer association between the Foreign Office and the Defence Committee. That is well worth consideration, but it raises quite- a different question, and it must be added that in an exchange of letters on the subject between Major Legge-Bourke and the Prime Minister, Mr. Attlee does not come offSecond best. None the less, the danger that the Head of the Civil Service, if he happened to be a masterful person (and there have in fact been such), 'might act in an arbitrary and bureaucratic manner, taking decisions for which no Minister is directly answerable to Parliament, is not negligible, and Major Legge-Bourke has rendered a service in raising it, even though in fact the Prime Minister himself is ultimately responsible for the
higher Civil Service appointments. WILSON HARRIS.
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