Joun Butt is a happy-go-lucky gentleman as a rule, but ib is plain that he has not yet forgotten the lessons learnt during the three years of war in South Africa. He wisely refrained even from hinting that he would like to "swap horses" while crossing the many Modder Rivers that were found there, (Modder means "muddy.") But though much mud was stirred up he determined to use Mr. W.H. Long'sexpression "to muddle through," and this he did, successful though scratched. Now, however, that he has found the opportunity he is lifting up his voice to insist upon the recognition of some of the fought. A cumber of the old hands principles and experience so dearly
have gone, and before their places are filled he is calling on the Prime Minister to note the one thing needful, This, he carefully points out, is not the paying of party debts nor the pleasing of personal friends, it is not "due regard" to rank and fashion that be requires, but simple efficiency.
The word has been much before the British public of late years. It is but " long-drawn form of the much bui more homely word fitness, The man who is fib is efficient. He is the round man in the round hole, not the round man in the square hole as has been so often the case in our official records. Mr. Arnold White has written article upon article exposing the shortcomings of our Government system, We pride ourselves on our honesty, and on the scrupulous integrity of our services of all sorts. It is a legitimate pride, but tacked on to it there should be the humid hating confession that though honest enough we are not competent enough, Everything to which the Goverament puts its hand is mismanaged. We may not be a nation of amateurs, but it is quite certain that our management is amateur from top to bottom, and therefore inefficient. Scores of instances absurd enough to be laughable, yet serious enough as' symptoms of a system, are constantly being brought to light.
Here is one of the latest. Government employe ea. vatstation wanted a screw-driver. He wrote to headquarters for one, and, though to provide something for the many clerks and writers to do, his application was passed from office to office and from pillar to post until finally he was informed that screwdrivers were not supplied singly but only with complete boxes of tools, Whereupon he immediately requested that a box of tools should be dispatched. This second application ran the gauntlet as its predecessor had done, and resulted in the information that boxes of tools were provided only where there were carpenter's shops. Fully alive nowt the fan of the thing, the amused official demanded a carpenter's shop—and got it.
Where such things are possible despair of improvement may be excused, Even now it is to be doubted whether the ordinary man at home knows what he wants when in his blind fashion he cries out for efficiency. What is efficiency? Roughly speaking, it is, as we have said fitness, But how is fitness to be secured? Surely by forethought, training, truth, and energy. First by forethought, Jeho Bull's managers, directors, governors, and think before ban. Imagine a and servants generally must think,
practical engineer beginning costly foundations, and erecting expensive lidings upon them without first considering whether the erection would fit the machinery he meant to put into it. Imagine, to turn toa real example, a Government sending for troops to fight Boers and impressing upon all and sundry that it was a case of "unmounted men preferred," Such lack of prevision is unpardonable, and of itself sufficient to prevent efficiency in any sense of the term.
Next to forethought comes careful training. Before long we shall have effectually shut the door of all British Consulates to all but trained men. The two Latin words most neces sai to be dinned into the ears of H. M. Government just now are ad hoc, Every man taken into the Government employ from the Prime Minister to the younger drummer should have had his training ad hoe, his special and particular preparation in the technicalities of his professional duties. Peel was brought up by ails father for the special duty pertaining to members of Parliament. His career showed the value of such training. After we have found the advantage of a skilled Consular body we shall next have skilled diplomatists perhaps, then skilled heads to the ar Office, the Admiralty, the Foreign Office, and so on. It will be a revolution doubtless, and the aristocracy will raise a howl of alarm and anger because their preserves may thrown open to poachers, buts that the magic word effi ciency can be paraded before the the eyes of the electorate the voter will pardon the curt dismissal of the aristocrat. England loves a lord, we are told, but it the lord wants office in the future he will have to be fit for it.
If the present Government is wise it will make reform after this fashion one of the main planks in its platform. Some popular cry will be needed to wipe out the stigma of the suggested dear loaf, and we know of none that would be more likely to take with the mass of the people below the higher grades than one which promised a thorough revisal of the system prevailing before the war. It must be done either by the present Government or its successor, for persistence in the present fatuous line must in the end prove disastrous to Government and coun try alike.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.