1940-11-13 — Page 7

CHINA MAIL Bankruptcy Of The

WINDSOR

SINGAPORE

During the last war there was much. Justified hatred of the "brass-hat" -the man who not only led the Army from 'behind,

Triple-threat diplo- but who did so without any ap- macy by Germany, Italy preciation of the conditions at the

front, or of the fact that soldiers

the mat.

Civil Service

A 'Cutting 'From "Truth")

"THE CUBS ARE WITH YOU, “DAD !”

F

to make concrete recommenda

first tions. Impressed from his days with the necessity. of being judical, he invariably seeks ret fuge in a verdict of "not proven. The same civil servants delight in going from committee to comihit! 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. Indies from pore to the intelligent at-told that this is a civilians' war no responsibility and they develop decision to be taken within a week, tea-party to tea-party, where they will exchange: their wit lelsms and with the civilians in the front line. no sense of responsibility. Few much less a day or an hour.. 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. ALU This as the servants of the public. Tolvant who takes most delight in points of view will be put, but Americans to whom it had within it remains the same.

war is run largely by civilians them the public, and especially fobserving 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 committee reaches its perfection when **The twain" meet at

is not the man in uniform who to earn its living by producing mittees and conferences. His me-the interests of a number of der builds and directs the machine; goods, is something to be, if not moranda may to works of 'consi-partments conflict. There must be Co-ordination, at Singapore; it is the gate-with startling pervasiveness it is despised, at least looked down up- derable literary merit of an acade- co-ordination.

army of civilians way between East and an

which on from the Olympian heights, in mic type. But they are intermin- best, means a compromise on half- Not be hearted action which represents controls every secter of national whose rarefied atmosphere it ap- able and indeterminate.

factor, .df West, cross-roads of half. The brass-hat was marked pears inconceivable that a particu- ing publicly responsible for the the highest common a' world.

out from his fellow soldiers by lar individual should really need, action taken, he is not concerned agreement. More, often the highest

factor of agreement is a unáni the ornaments of red tabs and a The naval base which veritable forest of medals.

mous decision to do nothing. It Our

is exceedingly rare that an inter- have no in- was opened there in 1938 civilian brass-hats

departmental committee settles signia to distinguish them from is regarded as less vul- the common herd. Yet, contem-

down with the genuine intention of finding the best way of achiev nerable than Gibraltar, plating their works, the colossal

ing, an object, even if it means muddles, the interminable red not to mention Hong Kong tape, the procrastination and lais-

over-riding the unimportant !in- terests of a few departments. which has no hinterland.ser-laire attitude, one is forced to the conclusion that, when the civil The symbolism of Ameri-servant enters his office, the or- can cruisers at the Singa-dinary citizen in him is left on pore. ceremonies in Feb-

That there is serious incompe- ruary, 1938, is therefore, tence, if no worse fallings, in the heightened to-day by the divil service few people now doubt. open threats of the Axis- scarcely concealed in the last Tokyo partnership years of peace. None will deny that the civil service can produce 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' of ted-impliedly-for years. the paucity of such talent that That is one reason why Sir Wilfrid Eady has had to hold American warships join- to organise new services for the three important posts in five years ed British at Singapore. Government. An administrative Even when it

system which fails to produce or was not attract great administrators must 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 contact he

the same way as it was in days. 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 reached could be taken at his terests. Possibly, there-

Je sure by the Minister conet.ned, fore, Singapore has not after a long and leisurely proce- seen the last of American dure of departmental examination. In ordinary commercial life, the warships.

civil service administrative sys- From the day when committees

tem of lengthy memoranda and would surely bring Britain's plans for a bankruptcy in its train, even if it naval base at Singapore mentality which appears

was not accompanied by the type began to take physical find its special hom in the civ

fence.

..

War

has

revealed what

was

to

From "The Argus"--(Melbourne)

Still A Quiet Hour

try, whose

the sexes

was

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 puotic, who always want the Im- possible or the inadvisable, the country, or what would be left of it, would be run perfectly. They arc, morcover, quite conviriced that the secrets of good adminis- tration have been given only to the select band of permanent civil servauts and that, while an in- "crease in 'their numbers miglit 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 merely a very close traces union. They are a Palous chique. They hate with an intense jealousy the temporary civil servants introduced since the cutbreak of war.

There is no single cure for these.. iils. But the evil spirit pervading much of the civil service must be cut out, root and branch. It is not merely a problem for post-war consideration. It affects the -vory dynamic of our war-machine. The only. immediate remedy is the utterly ruthless eradication of all individuals who display these vices. "Affer the war we can dis- cuss new administrative methods and new nicthods of recruitment. The one certainty is that it must not be left to civil servants to mend their system.“

By Ivor Brown

shape, this position was recognised not simply as of importance to Britain! but to all nations with, 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 screne 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 tween 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 a greens of 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 de-much of the luck lies neither with playing croquet at Buxton. Cro-tic pull: it was the kind of glori-tudes be protected and sustained. theous village clout which sets men A piece of goed grass and green ΠΟΙ the genera- quet is a gentle pastime, in 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 10 be old and rich in 1914 a mannerly, companionable, grace-inused fielder wades ankle-deep in peace, as Marvell knew. To de- The equipment of the to be certainly ofderful exercise demanding immense the long grass.

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 crease of wealth is, to our credit, mathematical mind, and an im- halcyon year when the sun shone ed 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 for the ordinary fuelling facilities, forti- hope, is having a good war; but of temper. It happens in pleasanting at Plymouth, was never pin- of sentiment

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, heavy guns, and an air where you live. Better a cottage while you wait for your opponent's English scene. And elsewhere? of the harassed village and the in Cumberland than a castle in hatid to slip is indeed a green Well, Aranger 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, 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 from the city of Singapore war became for 'Britain mainly a las all games are, a form in which above merry Dover, where Lan-from the fallacy that we redeem and protected from the scn-and-air war this new kind of the arrival of the foe to break up cashire men have so often been one loss by inflicting another.

territorial injustice was the more your strategy, which reached to most mettlesome, over august To those enduring the fearful mainland by a vast im- 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 hurse of men, one Sergeant Comp and to those who suffer the pro- their arrangements for of a dive bomber. Yet, for all its ton was going his playboy way to longed and grinding discipline of most notable weakness made

security found that they had raids and revenges, croquet some- century at Lord's, just as If Ufe continual warnings and of Vigils must be attributed not to chosen the wrong burrow. For how is the symbol of tranquil and were young again and the sky a long enforced the undimmed and fleecy mattress for smiling Cupids tranquil hour may seem ti far-off, any geographical defect while London had the smile of untroubled years.

South Devon and other supposed-

impossible blias. · Descending yet nor to its equipment, ly Arcadian, untroubled, and para- the click of the mallet.

That such soft sylvan music aser pacific cherubim.

or the He would be foolish, who wished again to a cellar more stuffy than disal places. Then that tide turn prattle of the bowlers on the these trifles away. One Indignant cool and listening to the drone of which cost over £20,000-ed and there was no particular neighbouring and 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 screnely played while ed at the sight of so much lawn easily be jealous of the Pennine,

in what "the house years to complete, but to dwelling

the infernal orchestra screamed in Buxton; she would have had shepherd or the silvered seniors agents call "the Surrey High- the Washington Treaty lands" or by communing with over counties not an hour's flight nothing but cabbage patch, plant- taking tea or sport upon our away seemed preposterous anding sprouts and savoys where the English lawns: but there is a plea- "under which Britain re- Kipung's" dim, blue goodness of

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 autumin cally.

gapore base was meant massed murder in the not-so-far quet hoops and tennis nets now sun, of the tumbling Tess at Caul- What Singapore needs for use by a political en-South-east, it was a day of breeze stood. I take leave to think that dren Snout, of n desperate putt

and brilliance, turning grey to the amount of cabbage now grow which scerned 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 mark- sadden the palate, while it may the din, the squalor, and the dan- ed on my ticket as Chapel-en-le- satisfy the stomachs, of all que ger memory tells of quiet hours for 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 move very native and noble a thing, the feed upon. Sentimental? Escapist? gally coloured counties, rolling belated and very necessary divid- Call it what you; Will-Still the make Singapore synony- tion between the United away northward, It was a ter end of our grey, moist, misty happiest way to sit among the mous with law and order States and Great Britain, restrial ocean, a tumble of reared waters, that he who would des sandbags is to think of preen and crested land waves, an uh-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 lime- and consoling: --spaces is doing savoured, and possessed.