G
Invisible men of
the 'power-house'
THE HONGKONG TELEGRAPH, SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 6, 1947.
उ
A fow men in Whitehall control the machine of State-yet the public hardly knows them. In this article H. E. DALE, leading authority on this Civil Service, presents а close up of the HIGHER CIVIL SERVANT
IIE ordinary citizen makes
Tacquaintance with the
Civil Service mostly through the Post Office clerk and the tax collector, officials of the Ministry of Food or Minis. try of Labour.
all subordinates, But these are small teeth on the circumference of one wheel of a great and complex machine. He lows little of the chlefs of the service, the men wir it niways al the central power- house, and subject only to Ministers) control the machine's structure and eculate its revolutions.
Sull text does he know of the "key-men," o t'ny proportion of the whole service, in their discharge of
phrases; in deliberation, a judgment, diffusioned but without cynleism; in speech and action, a cool prudence.
He has had perhaps 20 or years' experience behind the scenes of government in a great parliamen-
30
tary democracy. No Intelligent and eduented man can go through that the experience without learning
validity of well-worn practicnt principles and opinions which most men accept in theory but do not always apply in action.
L
That the modern world
is very complicated, and nobody in it Inful ble; that it is impossible to foresee the full consequences of great | measures, legislative or executive, in
community of forty millions; that! the sincerity and vehemence with another function, perhaps in the larig' which a proposal Is urged by its have little necessary 1 even thore Important than the advocates
effelent working of the ministro- relation to its true merits; that in Live machine their function as practieni affairs a choice has often to right and nd be made nel between the confidential aspisiontse advisers of Ministers on "questions wrong but between two rights
Two wrongs: that facts are some-
مجمل الله
ADMISSION
PAY HERE
SIDE
SHOWS
SPORTS
LOMPERS
ur
"Miss Emily, what
15
this I heas about 2
of policy," often grave matters of times lamentably stubborn against
which the decision must have far- desires.
reaching consequences,
WHA
CLASS HABITS
our
the st
belig has WHAT kind of
enciety and system of govern-
evolvert perform
utויות
dullos?
No general reply to this question can be completely accurate. But
recognble type In 1 "norm." though it may not be fully represented by any individunt.
T
In externals, the high oficial in simply middle-aged profissionai
All these are truisms which few would deny as general propositions. The mark of the high civil servant is that their truth lias been forced upon him by his own experience,
nd guides his judgment.
11일 중국 But this is not cynicism. consistent, and in fact combined With a firm belief in reason and t
which again s ultimate driumph, 'mplies a belief in the fundamental degancy and good sense of human
beings.
จ
COMPLEX JOB
GRAND FETE/ AUGUST ¿BANK”
HOLIDAY
CAR PARK
SILES
Spry tossing you double 01 quits for the takings and you losing?”
Men who changed
N August 20, 1897-50 years ago an Army doctor at Secunderabad, Central India; found that a dapple-winged mosquito under his microscope carried a para-
man of what may perhaps still be prudence of speech and action site which he recognised.
described as the upper-middle class with the nopearance, manners and habits of that class of well-to-do but far fram rich, educated usually (but a public by no means always) school of some kind and at Oxford or Cainbridge, belonging to one of the five or six large non-political clubs near Whitehall, perhaps a member
and the of a gulf club
owner
of a all car, residing in Kensington or Chelsea, or in one of the mon ittructiva sula-rbs ich as Wimbledon or Humpatead.
is similarly leam in the best of schools, experience. The govern- ment of this country is one of the most difficult bul/nesses Kin the world, for scale and complexity; and not only to have KAVETTHEW the conduct It, but from day to day to .nswer fur
conduct, down perhaps to some tiny detall. 10 House of Commons containing an enger Opposition, to a vigilant Press
nd to a vocal public
their
The high offtefal knows that a trivial mistake may bring absurdly disproportionate confusion and con- tunely on his Department and his Minister. He knows also that a big mistake. probably made
under If you mel im in
aily strong popular or political pressure, charlage, you would find a man well will cause much trouble long after lets, in a quiet style, healthy the Minister responsible for it has though perhaps looking rather over-
Kone elsewhere. wurked with the indeßnable air of ** exercise i used to the authority, courteous if sorved conversation, clearly no fool.
DISCREET
That evening the doolor sal down and began the writing of a poem:
"This day relenting God Hath placed within my hand A wondrous thing; and God Be praised..
our
by
lives.
A. P. MAGUIRE
Thanks to Ronald Ross, the fever- belt of Panama was cleared up, and the great canal wna.bullt. Sierra Leone - West Africa's "White Man's Grave"
{} health resort. People became could live in vast areas that had been deadly and shunned.
Malaria? A living organism, a maggo' in the corpuscles of the blood.
But how spread? That was known, That day's discovery was one of
Well, by the mosquita, probably doctor, Ronald Koss, lived to be mosquito? There were 300 species. the greatest in all history. The But how-and. by which kind of
honoured.
his But in the years of
A few years before his death in he was heat he research work in India's
In 1892, working in his own time hampered by prejudice, held back by and without encouragement, Ronald 1932, Professor Sir Ronald Hoss, red tape, sneered at by the jealous.. Ress sought out the answers. He had Nobel Prize winner, went to live in Even when he had identified the disappointments. He made mistakes, a flat near Putney Heath, to be close anopheles mosquito as the carrier of the kept an infected insect in water the Research Institute founded
the water as nis memorial. malaria, chief scourge of the tropics, for a week and drank that killed millions yearly in India No result. alone, his way was not immediately easy.
For as he wrote later-"the faci is that mosquito reduction was very
The cable, laid with the aid of warships after many mishaps, ceased to work on September 3 that year, and not until 1866 was the service
restored,
Story of the steam engine
HERE are pictures that remain
in the mind. vivid and some- times apocryphal, when sober chap. ters of history are forgotten
They are mainly inoral pictures with one-man subjects-Alfred and the cakes, Bruce and the solder, Newton and the apple.
And to these you might add the boy Watt watching the bolling kettle with its rattling lid and so discover- ing the power of steam.
Now Janies Watt, who August 10, 128 years great inventor. He was a model of patience and persistence, a scientist of courage and foresight, but he did not invent the steam engine.
+
died on ago, was a
BY THE
WAY
by Beachcomber
LL good things. come, to a
beginning. (as the stock-- Bankor said when the actress accepted his invitation to a quiet upper).
Today sees the start of the Government-sponsored S, P, A....A. the Society for the Prevention of Anybody Doing Anything. Specif Ann-clothes police winTM-em- powered to find out what everybody is doing and then to stop them doing it pending fùqu'ry. Rustiguzzi holds up
the show ¿HE seemed to be able to sustain
Da note Indefinitely." wrote..
scmcone of a singer the other day. Rustiguzzi used to have small' mechanical appllance in her mouth; which helped her out when an extra cffort was required: One night the appliance went wrong, and during the famous recitativo passage in the. second net of "Tiziano Vecelliu," a high whistling uste Wan beard. Broccoli, who was singing Niecolo Marcello, waited for the noise to stop, but it went en. Scampi, the can- duator, scowicd, and waggled his baton ogrity Rustiguzz! fidgeted and shifted from foot to foot, but the only way to stop the noise was to move to the wings and discard the appliance. Tais she did, and, the show went on.
Plastic sunlight
"EXPERTS" In conference recent- My suggested that sham moon- Tght-fluorescent, they call
It-
Fhould be installed in cities. And why not a gigantic plast'e sun, fastened by gigantic steel hawsers
helicopter,
10
a gigantle Suspendet perm-nently in
and
The
antie stratosphere over London? And if it comes to that (as it no doubt will, since we are not living
In the Middle Ages) why not sexy the upper
with fluorescent starlight, with electrically controlled twinkling?
Hopeatch che muove it solo e Paltre stelic
News from Aberbananer
that PLEA
the National Asteddfod of Wales should be held at Aberbananer has been refused by the Higit Council of Archdruids, in session at Llangerkin, The Council points out that the attempt
to incorporate such games
as pea-pushing with the nose in the festival can only bring discredit on the whole affair. Archdruid Morgan the Laundry said: "There is nothing bardic whatever about using the nose to propel a pea up a mountain."
WEATHER FORECASTS
BY RADAR
weather
In 1929 a testimonial fund was His Army superiors seemed deter opened for his benefit, since it was inned to hinder him. He asked for found that he was obliged to draw
Up-to-the-minute six months' research leave in a fever on his capital-Including the Nobel district. This was denied.
Prize money for family necessities,
forecasts which can tell the Is it surprising if he is cautious,
time a storm will hit any given Yel in and the counsellor of caution?
He seemed on the brink of a great
spot, and its extent to within mtural and necessary wariness
He was ordered away in Tromp's broom,
a few hundred yards, now are is in the last resort the servant of his unpopular among officials; governors discovery.
Of the steam engine he was the Uto disliked the expense and ductors the new station in a non-fever area Blake's whip. oyalty to the State and lo
ranny miles away.
improver rather than the inventor. Possible, the Canadian Army- Minister who are its representatives, trouble." AI/E many cately presume the mord When they have taken
He came from a Greenock family saya. a decision
But word got through to Britain,
RARITONES used to sing, with Sir Rohald Ross, as he came to be
vas and from Britain came instructions Dheartiness and head-wagging, that for two generations had becu In fact, headquarters in Ottawa qualities common to most of the his acute perception of the obstinate in the days of his recognition.
Russ should have his research & ballad about the Dutch Admiral concerned with things mathematical, reports that is the kind of weather auccessful in my profession whel facts wherein lie the real difficulties born in India in 1857 to the sound that
Tromp, who had a broom at the and in time he became apprentice forecasting Cunadians may expect in deals with ilvingen and current is the starting-point of the zeal and of gunfire, for the Mutiny had broken leave.
parasite-bearing mosquita mast and said he would sweep the to a sclentine instrument maker in the near future, if experimental affairs-integrity, cherty, d'scretion. ingenuity which he applies to over-out. it young officer he
isolated. The cklet scourge of mighty sea, and Admiral Blake, his the City at London, loyalty to superiors and certain coming or circumventing them. In unconventional, with Ideas of writing was
short-range, pin-point continues Its And British opponent, who had a whip toughness of fibre. Outside these, modern, government,
of plays and stúries, but always with the tropics was pinned down. prudence
long even prejudice was at the mast and said he would whip
course in tila specific temper of mind and dis- this kind is more than a negative one greatest, ever-uppermost iden, before
the mighty sen, the cause of malaria infection.
research experi position may be senyried up by two virtue,
At the end of this rollicking song Blake beats his Dutch opponent, All is very stirring, but, alas, it is not true..
Stories
of
As
Scotland
So the was
routed.
Yard
Three-fingered cheque faker
ORGERY is one of the easiest crimes to detect, but one of the hardest tasks of the police is to catch the forgers.
by EX-SUPT. T. B. THOMPSON
Operators Would
late of the 'Big Five'
concentrate on
לי
.
Admiral Blake e died on
It was In a newspaper article, In March 1652, months after the alleged Incident, thut the words appeared: "Mr. Trump, when he was in France, we understand, wore
August 1?. 1657-and Admiral Tromp were in fact opponents in battles at sca, .but history has und a A similarity of phrasing
nothing to say about a whip, and close examination of the typescript, the broom appears to be a
wisp which showed that n number had of the shrub so-called-and even been typed on the same machine, then only a rumour. Letter-box rubbery wax one ti One was the "feed" who stole let- gave us an idea of the gang's where- tie favourite methods of chi, ning ters and passed them on to Arm- abouts. strong. How hopeless it is to get cheques.
Then we got on to the trait of forged notes past the bank I
When by his own private detec- young man who had been used to discovered on a case in Leeds. West End Jewellery and furriers tive. system, he had established that
action until we a trap I tried shops where there would be cheques one of the letter writers had a bank by some of the cheques, but we did a flag of brooni." To perfect
Robert Blake, admiral and general account worth operating, he would not want to take
In oond, was not a rollicking sea passing forged notes in the in the morning mail.
The box would be forced so that forge the signature to a typed letter could collect the whole gang.
asking the bank to present bearer In March 1938 we were getting deg to make a song about, but a middle of bundles to the clerks
tut. The young mun We were graduate of Oxford," a member of who were checking and count she letters dropped on a newspaper with a cheque book.
which had been slid under the door.
patriot ing in the bank..
Then the paper was pulled out. The bearer of the letter was one watching obtained a cheque book by Parliament who fought as a soldier
'letter with a forged against the Royalists, and a of Armstrong's runners. As soon as means of
of Then the forgers would selecte returned with the
signature from Lloyds Bank in the who sak, when urged to declare book,
against Cromwell's assumption cheque Commercial-road.. cheque signed by someone they know Armstrong would write out
supreme power: "It is not for us to and send his "front" to cash it. us good for a three-figure amount,
We swoop
mind State affairs, but to keep foreigners from fooling us.". The next day a forged cheque was shed, but the bank paid out in Two continents Ove-pound, notes, of which we bad the numbers.
They flicked, over the notes at high speed; but, whenever they reached a dud note they stopped dead. The feet and the sound of the note had given if away.
Closing the not
...
On that case we began as if we were planning a military campaign, As soon as the bank reported a forged note, we put a flag on the map until we knew the area in which the agents were working."
Then we began to close in, street by street and shop by shop, unti pometimes we had a forged note in our possession a few minutes after It had been passed.
A letter would be typed and sent
His best man at this part of the to the bank over a carefully copied work was Joseph Eusace, whose signature asking that the cheque lanocent appearance had earned him should be paid in cash to the bearer, the nickname of Old Joe.
Meanwhile the master-brain was, Old Joe could not only present at work on the choque itself. He forged cheques qui'e blandly but in would remove the crossing with could talk, bank managers, into al chemients, or if thus cheque had a lowing i'm in open an account and. red crossing would forge a "pay, of course, receive a cheque
endorsement cash?
Then belds were used to wipe out the original amount for which the cheque was drawn and a: now and
handsome figure inserted.
book,
Plumber pose
are linked
On the following day three mem- August 22, 1850, there were frowerks and torchlight pro- bera of the gang were joined by Armstrong himself and they bought cessions in London and Newry and postal orders with some of the five- for on that day Queen Victorin pound notes,
President, Buchanan of the United States exchanged compliments by, Then wo swooped. Within an Allantie telegram. Two Continents Armstrong himself usually dressed hour of picking up the accomplices were linked and the peoples rejoiced. and posed as a plumber. But the Inspector Greenacre had led a raid
fint in Holloway, Yel the Arst Transatlantic tele- bits of icad piping in his bag of tools un Armstrong's concealed the inks, the pens and the where he found all his forging op gram had been sent some days be-
paratus Intact....
fore. bearing not greetings but chemicals of his real profession.
NEWS.
the Atlantle Messago No. 1 Telegraph Company, received at Valenila, the Irish terminal of the cable, and dated August 17. 1858, told of the collision off Newfound
And land of the ships Europa
But, clever án Three-fingered Jack was with his remaining angers, it was a pupil of his, Albert Arma'rong, Armstrong did not look, much But Armstrong would noi face In the Leeds case we had bad who caused us the most trouble at
iko a
Uliere plumber when he put on prison again. He had been fuck. We were closing the net when the Yard.
evening dress and. went into the before and he knew that his nex; our man got wind of us. He stop-
West End to sound his victims. sentence would be a stift one. He
committed suleide in a cell in Cafe Detective Inspector Greenacre donlan-rond palice station. worked with me on the Armstrong
ped operating.
The finest artist at forgery that I
£50,000 haul
over know was Three-Angered Jack. Armstrong wea the leader of a He earned his nickname when he gang which cleaned -- up more than gang and it was a long job. Our Old Joe was sentenced to five yeats Arabia. lost two Angers from one hand, in £200,000 in cheque fraudo in a single that clues were in the typed letters and two other member of the gang tearing them Away from a grille year. Ile bad
which came to the banks asking for gol three years oplece. behind a letter-box he was ruting. accomplices.-
choque books.
some
half-dozen
· (END· OF -SERIES)-
of
+
They had put into St Johns with
no lives lost; "Stay. anxiety "arrival," said the message.
non
work
In
But London did not sult this deli-weather forecasting cute youth who had been Jeered at present successful in boyhood for his low spirits, win hands of defence throughout his life suffered
from meats, severe headaches.
The method is simply to pick up approaching rain or snow clouds on radar screens in the sany manner as radar la used to plot the course of planes or projectiles in war. An X-ray picture is thrown 01 the radar screen which clearly shows the size, course, depth, speed and rain density or size of drops of Already there was in existence a approaching storms. crude steam engine called A fire engine. Watt studied it, saw that it was wasteful and found out the reason, and, as a man of science, set himself to making an improved engine of great practical use.
In Glasgow, twanted by the cor- poration when he attempted to set up his own shop, he was appointed mathematical Instrument maker to the University and enabled them to *establish # workshop.
(Continued on Page 10)
Dr
R. C. Longille and W. M... Palmer who operate a radar meteo- mlogical project at Canadian De- fence. Research Board Headquarters, td they have been "ED percent (accurate" sa fur-Associated Press.
DAVID LANGDON CARTOON
TRAVEL AGENCY
FLY SAIL
VISIA
TO
TO
SUNN
NEW
YORK AFRICA
ITALY
"It's quite all right, door. Mummy will be back in a
moment