THE CHINA MAIL, NOVEMBER 13, 1940.
Page
CHINA MAII Bankruptcy Of The
WINDSOR HOUSE,
SINGAPORE
at
During the last war there' was nuch justified hatred of the "brass-hat" the man who not only led the Army from belifnd,
preciation of the conditions at the
muddles, the interminable red tape, the procrastination and lais- ser-iaire attitude, one is forced to the conclusion that, when the civil servant enters his office, the or- dinary citizen in him is left on
the mat..
Civil Service
(A Cutting From "Truth")
“THE CUBS ARE WITH YOU, DAD !”
represents
agreement. More often the highest factor of agreement is a unani-. mous decision to do nothing. It is exceedingly rare that an inter- departmental committee settles down with the genuine intention of finding the best way of achiev- ing an object, even if it means over-riding the unimportant in- terests of a few departments.
to make concrete racommenda- tions. Impressed from his first days with the necessity of being judical, he invariably seeks re- Triple-threat diplo-but who did so without any ap-
fuge in a verdict of "not proven." macy by Germany, Italy front, or of the fact that soldiers
The same civil servants delight hi going from committee to commit. and Japan brings Singa- were still human beings. We are service. Civil servants are given as a matter of bare existence, a tee like fashionable ladies from pore to the intelligent at- told that this is a civilians war no responsibility and they develop decision to be taken within a weeks, tea-puty to tea-party, where they with the civilians in the front line, no sense of responsibility. Few much less a day or an hour. will exchange their wit;icisms and tention of thousands of But, whatever the hat, the head regard themselves in any sense It is the same type of civil ser- the scandal of the parish. All Americans to whom it had within it rentalns the same. This as the servants of the public. To vant, who takes most delight in points of view will be put, but war is run largely by civilians them the public, and especially observing the full traditional pro-little action will result. The com- been only an exotic name. for civilians. On every hand it that part which is foolish enough cedure of memoranda and coin-mitice reaches its perfection when "The twain" meet
is not the man in uniform who to earn its living by producing mittees and conferences. His me- the interests of a number of de- builds and directs the machine; goods, is something to be, if not moranda may be works of consi-partments conflict. There must be Singapore; it is the gate- with startling pervasiveness it is despised, at least looked down up-derable literary merit of an acade-co-ordination. Co-ordination, gåt
of army
civilians which on from the Olympian heights, in mic type. But they are intermin- best, means a compromise on half- way between East and an
controls every sector of national whose rarefied atmosphere it ap-able and indeterminate. Not be-hearted action which West, cross-roads of half life. The brass-hat was marked pears inconceivable that a particu- ing publicly responsible for the the highest common factor of a world.
out from his fellow soldiers by lar individual should really need, action taken, he is not concerned the ornaments of red tabs and a The naval base which veritable forest of medals. Our have no in- was opened there in 1938 civilian brass-hats
signia to distinguish them from is regarded as less vul- the common herd. Yet, contem- nerable than Gibraltar, plating their works, the colossal not to mer tion Hong Kong which has no hinterland. The symbolism of Ameri- can cruisers at the Singa- pore ceremonies in Feb-
That there is serious incompe- ruary, 1938, is therefore, tence, if no worse failings, in the heightened to-day by the civil service few people now doubt. War has revealed what was open threats of the Axis-scarcely concealed in the last Tokyo against the United States. brilliant and capable administra- These threats have exis-tors and organisers, such as Sir
Wilfrid Eady. But it is a mark ofi ted-impliedly-for years. the paucity of such talent that That is one reason why Sir Wilfrid Eady has had to hold American warships
three important posts in five years join-to organise new services for the ed British at Singapore. Government. An administrative Even when it was not a trac: great administrators must system which fails to produce or clear that the totalitarian be radically wrong, The civil advance in Europe was an recruited under much the same service to-day is for the most part American concern, it was conditions and organised in much plain that the aggressive when there was no attitude of totalitarian tween the Government and indus- States could become a rudimentary, and when the occa- try, when social services were
threat to American in- sional decisions which had to be
could be taken reached terests. Possibly, there-Je sure by the M nister conce. ned. at his fore, Singapore has not after a long and leisurely proce- seen the last of American in ordinary commercial life, the dure of departmental examination. warships.
From the day when tem of lengthy memoranda and committees would surely bring Britain's plans for abankruptcy in its train, even if it naval base at Singapore of mentality, which appear's began to take physical find its special home in the civil -shape, this position was recognised not simply as of importance to Britain but to all nations with
fence.
Nonc will deny
partnership years of peace.
that the civil service can produce
the same way as it was in days
contact be
civil service administrative sys-
was not accompanied by the typs
to
From The Argus" (Melbourne) ·
Still A Quiet Hour
try, whose
was to
..
One conviction held deeply and seriously by all civil servants is that the civil service is the last word in good administration 'and- that without the press and the public, who always want the im- possible or the inadvisable, the country, or what would be left of it, would be run perfectly. They are, moreover, quite convinced that the secrets of good adminis- tration have been given only to the select band of permanent civil servants and that, while an in- crease in their numbers might be good for the country and for themselves, an expansion in their ranks by the introduction of in- terlopers trained to quicker me- thods in more mundane walks of life is a thing to be strongly oppos- ed. Civil servants are not merelyļa very close trades union. They are a.jealous clique. They hate with an intense jealousy the temporary civil servants introduced since the cutbreak of war.
There is no single cure for these ills. But the evil spirit pervading much of the civil service must be cut out, root arid branch, It is not merely a problem for post-war.. consideration. It affects the very dynamic of ourivar-machine. The only immediate remedy is the utterly ruthless eradication of all individuals who display these vices. After the war we can dis- cuss new administrative' methods and new methods of recruitment. The one certainty is that it must not be left to civil servants to mend their system.
By Ivor Brown.
possessions or trade in- The rain, we know, rains most- farther north the goodness of the stone combers: these seas, so often more for Hitler by his barbarism terests in Southern Asia.ly on the just because "the un- hills, whether blue or green, was grey beneath a grizzling sky, were than he is for Britain by his horti- just have the just's umbrellas." never better than in this meteoro-now serene and shimmering in culture. There are infinite patches Australians have looked, war twenty years ago fell mainly logically magnificent summer of "fantastic summer's heat." Be- still for the potato; must the
twcen me..and Chapel itself cric-greens we eat consume the nobler. to the development of an upon youth, at least in this coun- 1940.
general privation, When the first great air assault keters flashed white, while
of a greens
our more gracious Empire defence plan bas-though severe, never approached was being made by the massed hearty, thumping batsman heaved games?
Let all such beauties and quie- ed on Singapore as one of the unendurable. But this time German planes. I happened to be all his crouched bulk into a gigan- the keystones in their cle- much of the luck lies neither with plat is a gentle pastime. Crotic pull it was the kind of glori- tudes be protected and sustained. the sexes. 'hor the genera-ouet a gentle pastime, in the ous village clout which sets men 4 piece of good grass and green tion 'but with the locality. best Elizabethan sense of the word, running five or six while the be- shade is the symbol of the spirit's old and rich in 1914 a mannerly, companionable, trace mused fielder wades ankle-deep in peace, as Marvell knew. To de- The equipment of the To be be
olderful exercise demanding immense the long grass. certainly
scribe a lawn, as did the author This 1940? Never. It was the of "Leaves, of Grass," as "the Singapore base is most im-und probably far richer, if still precision of eye and hand, a cal-
alive, in 1918. But this time in-culating, forward-thinking, almost high and serene summer of any handkerchief of the Lord, a scent- pressive, including great of wealth is, to our credit, mathematical mind, and an im- halcyon year when the sun shone cd gift and remembrance design- docks, repair shops, re-extremely unlikely. Nobody, we perturbable patience and mastery and men were glad. Drake, bowl-edly dropt," may smack too much fuelling facilities, forti-hope, is having a good war; but of tempar. It happens in pleasant ing at Plymouth, was never pin- of sentiment for the ordinary some are having far less trouble places and consumes serene and ned to more pacific grass or set taste. But when we are thinking fication with extremely than others. It all depends on sunlit hours. Planning your break against a better backcloth of the of the cruel contrasts of this war, where you live. Better a cottage while you wait for your opponent's English scene. And elsewhere? of the harassed village and the heavy guns, and an air cumberland than a castle in haud to slip is indeed a green Well, stranger still, while the hell's hamlet undisturbed, of slumbrous base. It is some ten miles Kent.
thought in a green shade: Cro- tattoo. was sounding Incessantly vicarage gardens and the roaring, from the city of Singapore When in the middle of 1940 the quet, of course, is a form of strife, beside the cricket fields of Kent, blasted heath, let us at least fee war became for Britalu mainly a as all games are a form in which | above merry Dover, where Lan- from the fallacy that we redeem. and protected from the sea-and-air war this new kind of the arrival of the fde to break up cashire men have so often been one loss by inflicting another. mainland by a vast im-territorial Injustice was the more your strategy, which reached 40-most mettlesome, over august To those enduring the fearful emphasised. It had its Ironies. wards celestial triumphs, may be Canterbury and Tonbridge, great risks and strains of aerial battle penetrable swamp. Its Those who had most carefully likened to the remorseless action purse of men, one Sergeant Comp- and to those who suffer the pro- most notable weakness made their arrangements for of a dive bomber. Yet, for all its ton was going his playboy way to longed and grinding discipline of security found that they had, ralds and revenges, croquet some- ja century at Lord's, just as if life continual warnings and of vigils must be attributed not to chosen the wrong burrow. For a how is the symbol of tranquil and were young again and the sky it long enforced the undimmed and deccy mattress for smiling Cupids tranquil hour may seem a far-off, any geographical defect while London had the smile of untroubled years.
South Devon and other supposed- That such soft sylvan music as pacific cherubim,
impossible bliss. Descending yet nor to its equipment, y Arcadian, untroubled, and para- the click of the mallet or the He would be foolish who wished again to a cellar mare-stuffy than which cost over £20,000,-disal places. Then that tide turn prattle of the bowlers on the these trifles away. One indignant cool and listening to the drone of ed and there was no particular neighbouring und exquisite lawns but misguided lady had complain-death above and without, we may 000 and took nearly fifteen pleasure to be discovered by should be serenely played while ed at the sight of so much Jawn easily be jealous of the Pennine years to complete, but to dwelling what the house the infernal orchestra screamed in Buxton; she would have had shepherd or the silvered seniors agents coll "the Surrey High-over counties not an hour's flight nothing but cabbage-patch, plant- taking tea or sport upon our the Washington Treaty lands" or by communing with under which Britain re- Kipling's" d in, blue, goodness of away szemed preposterous and ing sprouts and savoys where the English lawns: but there is a plen-
utterly unjust.
bowlers strove on their patch of sure, too, if bitter-sweet, in think- the Weald." But if you went After my croquet -I walked in green velvet; she would have sowning of the good affairs, of Great duced its Navy so drasti-
Derbyshire on that afternoon of gross cauliflowers where the cro-Gable burnished in the autumn. eally.
gapore base was meant massed murder in the not-so-far quet hoops and tennis nets now sun, of the tumbling Tees at Caul- desperate putt What Singapore needs for use by a political en-South-east. It was a day of breeze stood. I take leave to think that dron Snout, of a
Fand brilliance, turning grey to the amount of cabbage now grow which seemed to flag, then strug is ships. A formidable tity with a two-power gold. Standing on the platforming in this country is sufficient to gled up and fell. Somewhere amid fleet, say of eight battle-navy. Such an entity of that simple little station marksadden the palate, while it may the din, the squalor, and the dan- ships and their quota of could now exist only thr-F. South, I saw the shire, not millions. The perfect lawn is so hope to recreate and minds to auxiliary craft, might ough close naval coopera- usually to be, set among our more very native and noble a thing, the feed upon. Sentimental? Escapist? gaily coloured counties, rolling belated and very necessary divid-Call it what you will Still the nake Singapore synony-tion between the United away northward. It was a ter end of our grey, moist, misly happiest way to sit among the mous with law and order States and Great Britain, real ocean, a tumble of reared winters, that he who would des- sandbags is to think of green and crested land waves, an un-troy or diminish these sweet, calm, places once more to be trodden, in the Far East. The Sin-extended to the Pacific. dulant majesty of grit and Ulme- and consoling spaces is. doing savoured, - and possessed,
1
ed on my fleket as Chapel-en-le- satisfy the stemachs, of all our ger memory tells of quiet hours for