Speed is of the essence of victory. The dead weight of the National Government and its vast majority has vanished in a night—an impressive tribute to the pressure of public opinion in a free country. A new and vital current now pours through the national life. But though we have mercifully rid ourselves of the inertia and complacency of our late rulers, certain obstacles remain to be overcome before the national will can exert its maximum effort. It is not enough to change Ministers and Under Secretaries and to deal justly with Parliamentary inefficients. Another great hierarchy calls for review—the hierarchy which reigns unobtrusively but potently in Whitehall and persists, year in, year out, however kaleidoscopic political scene.
Criticism of the Civil Service is an ungracious task. It reached its position of eminence in easier and more spacious days than those of our own time. Two fundamental principles on which its work is based—lengthy examination of all proposals and minute control of expenditure—operated formerly in a restricted field. The content of public business was a fraction of its present volume. Violent controversy might rage over Home Rule, or the extension of the franchise, or the rights of trade unions, but such controversies turned largely on matters of opinion. They did not create the volume of current business which now pours daily through a department. Neither did they exact the detailed and specialized knowledge necessary for the administration of a semi-Socialist State. The civil servant, then as now, played the part in no sinister sense of the hidden hand interposed betwee Ministers and Parliament. Then, as now, his experience and judgment were potent in bringing to heel some crude political plan which would have involved his Minister in ridicule. As experts familiar with every twist and turn of the Parliamentary game they have saved countless Ministers from folly.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.