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away men who knew the language and replace them by ment who did not know the language and who would not be in touch with the people.
Mr. AMERY: Mr. Alexander, it comes to this, that any- thing that suggests to them that their administrative service is being taken out of their hands by an organisation here would be resisted, but, on the other hand, if you put it to them that the agricultural fund was building up a corps of specialists, and by paying to the pool they could always get the exact specialist they wanted for the particular piece of research work in hand. and have his services for the time they wanted him and then have no further obligation as regards pension or anything, they inight agree.
Mr. ALEXANDER: I think so, especially if there was a certain amount of visiting done to see whether our institutions were up to date, and so on, Some of the men could be sent round effectively to assist men already working in one particular field with their knowledge of similar work in other fields. I think we might be able to make out a case. It is always very difficult to get them to pay salaries to any officers unless they are of the country itself, because their whole idea now is to get as many Ceylonese officers trained as possible. In the interests of develop- ment we might be able to persuade them to do that. They might probably ask that Ceylonese should be brought in. that any Ceylonese specially trained at the Government expense they generally are should also be brought into the scheme if sufficiently qualified.
Mr. AMERY: If you are going to be faced in many Colonies with a demand for gradually localising the ordinary administra- tion, it might help to have a sort of super-service of specialists who would all be trained in the highest institutions here and of whom only a very small proportion might eventually come from the Ceylonese or any other.
Mr. ALEXANDER: I think that would appeal to them. Mr. AMERY: Would the objections about agriculture apply in the same way to forestry, or would it be possible to pool the whole forestry service?
Mr. ALEXANDER: In forestry there are experts in the same way that there are in agriculture. The ordinary forestry officer would certainly have to know the language, a man in charge of a circle, as they are called, would have to know the language. We do not possess expert research officers in forestry at present. but we have had a Committee on Forestry, and we hope that that Committee is going to recommend a considerable increase in staff. They hope that increase in the staff will be made up mostly of Ceylonese. I have not seen the report yet, but I hope that increase will include a certain number of expert officers, e.g., a man to look after the commercial side of forestry, a sylvi- culturist, and so on.
Mr. WINSTEDT: In practice, would not the interchange of these experts be over a very small area, and would not their range of usefulness be over a small area? Our Conservator of Forests says that the only problems that interest him are those of India, the Dutch East Indies, and the Philippines, so that an expert on forestry from, say, West Africa would be of little use probably in Malaya, or one from Malaya in West Africa.
Mr. AMERY: I wonder. British Guiana is under an Indian forestry officer.
Mr. WINSTEDT: That would be the administrative branch. An administrative officer would be useful anywhere, but an expert on some technical subject might have to start afresh in a different region.
Mr. OLIPHANT: The work is becoming very specialised in certain Colonies, and certain Colonies would want specialists in certain branches, Jamaica might want an expert in re- afforestation of a denuded area, and he would go to a similar
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Colony where the same problem arises. He would not be wanted in all other Colonies; they would not ask for it.
Mr. AMERY: You would not say the work of the higher range of research was necessarily localised?
Mr. OLIPHANT: I should say very much the contrary. Mr. AMERY; I imagine the Indian Service learnt enormously from the experience of both France and Germany.
Mr. OLIPHANT: Yes.
Mr. ALEXANDER: Nearly all the woods we are growing in Ceylon are from other countries.
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Mr. OLIPHANT: As far as the administrative branch is concerned, I do not think there is any need for transfer during the first ten years, or possibly more, of a man's service. That is the general idea in India. A man is appointed to a Province and kept to that Province as a rule, unless he is considered to be more suitable elsewhere, until he reaches what is called the administrative rank in India. The word "administrative is used in quite a different sense in the Colonial Service. When he becomes a Conservator he is said to reach administrative rank. From that point onwards he may be transferred, and is generally I think transferred, anywhere among the Provinces in India. something on the same lines would be suitable for the forestry services of the Colonies.
One very essential point, I think, about the service is that the staff officer must accept interchangeability as a first con- dition of service, that is to say, you must be able to transfer him at any time. At the same time, I think he should also be entitled to transfer after, say, 10 years of service, and, there- after, say, at five year intervals, in order to keep the ball rolling more or less as regards experience, and so on.
Mr. AMERY: Would it come to this, that there would be a cadre of specialists partly recruited from the specially quali- fied and specially trained people here, and that in addition the ordinary administrative officer, originally in the service of a particular Colony, should, after a certain length of service, be entitled to qualify, as it were, for admission to the staff, and thereupon be on the list of those to be transferred anywhere as part of the central organisation? Would that be your idea?
Mr. OLIPHANT: More or less. Really one can divide the officers into three classes. There are the routine men, what one might call executive officers during the first 10 years of service, they do the executive work on the spot, the field officers really. Then you get the specialist officers, and, finally, the controlling staff, Conservators and upwards. The routine men I would not transfer during the first 10 years of service. The specialist officers might be transferred at any time, according to where their services were required, and in the same way the controlling officers may be considered in a way as specialists, they have learnt the work of administration, managing a group of units. and they become specialists. But there is another thing to consider. Very often in forestry a man will start in the routine branch and will gradually specialise in some particular subject and become an expert on that subject. It is going to he very the difficult to draw a line between the routine men and specialist men. Therefore. I think it would be advisable to have everyone on one cadre, which would be distributed as necessary. Mr. AMERY: I quite agree. if it were politically feasible, that the easiest thing would be Sir Donald Cameron's original suggestion. to have them all on one cadre, and then farm out, but if there are insuperable difficulties to that I should have 'There are thought your point might be met in this sense. three categories of people, the ordinary executive routine workers in the technical branches, there are the specialists, the scientists, research men, not always capable administrators. Lastly, for the men at the top, the big administrators. the heads of Agricultural Departments, the heads of Forestry Depart- ments. you want men who have had experience as a rule of
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