A PRIVILEGED PUBLIC SERVANT.

Dominion, Volume 4, Issue 1159, 21 June 1911, Page 6

A PRIVILEGED PUBLIC SERVANT.

The dispute between the local branch of tho Educational Institute and the Commandant of the Junior Cadets has readied a point when to refrain from comment upon it would be to condone an action which at least calls for public inquiry. The Commandant of the Cadets, "Major" M'Dox.ud, Ims frequently been in the public eye, and is generally believed to owe his position, his peculiarly favoured treatment by the Government, and his rapid and unexplained promotion, to his services to the party in power. He has not infrequently been the subject of discussion in the House. The complaint of the Institute against him is that ho attacked Captain Bauachey, n Junior Cadet officer and a teacher at the Hiitfc District High School, anc , used his petty authority to penalise the school, owing to his anger at a certain inoffensive and perfcctlj proper resolution proposed by Cap tain Ballachey in his civil capacity as a member of the Teachers' Insti tutc. The Educational Institute dis cussed the matter last week, and has not yet finished with it, and in ths meantime Mit. M'Donald has sent s "report" to the Minister for Education, which we summarise in anothei column. We need not now say anything more of the facts in the dis pute than that the case against Mr, M'Donald has not been met by him. What dqes require notice at present is, in the first place, this gentleman , ! undesirable conception of his right; and duties as a public servant. II will be remembered that ho brought a Departmental file to Mr. Flux tho president of the local branch oi the Educational Institute, and per mitted him to examine it, but forbade him to win the information ir any way. To one of the members oi the Institute, however, he showee the files, and, according to that member, who defended him very stoutly at the meeting, ho gave permission to use the matter in the file. The public will bo glad to know what the Minister thinks of this. At present the public have no option save to believe that he allows certain of his subordinates to show Departmental files to his friends or relations as he pleases. The offence is so grave in itself that it is hardly heightened by the fact that a member of Parliament cannot obtain a glimpse of a Departmental file if it suits the Government to keep it locked up from his sight. As to the manner of Mr. M'Donald's extraordinary report to the Minister, tho public will quite reasonably feel perplexed and displeased. The illiteracy and flippancy of it may not be of very much moment; there arc more important aspects of it to bo considered. In the first place the tone and manner in which this unimportant official.feels ho can with confidence address his Ministerial chief arc of a most objectionable significance. Mr. Fowlds is of course well enough aware that insolence and familiarity and a dogmatic and overbearing tone arc things that a subordinate in a public Department should not be able even to approach, in a communication to a Minister, without being severely reprimanded or dismissed. Everybody is aware of that very simple principle. Why, then, is Mr. M'Donald able to do with impunity what no other Civil Servant would dare to do? The public will have no difficulty in concluding that Hit. M'Donald is privileged to do and say very much what he chooses in the knowledge that he has a "pull," as the Americans have it, that enables him not only to secure extraordinary and inexplicable, preferments, but also to indulge in extraordinary impertinences in communications in which in any other country, or in the case of almost any other public servant in this country, impertinence would not be tolerated. Mr. Fowlds has probably not considered that he has incurred a pretty heavy responsibility in authorising tha publication of his subordinate's "report." He will find it difficult to defend himself when, as certainly will happen, .the matter is _ discussed in the House next session. _Ho can escape the charge of having permitted a gross infraction of all the principles of decent administration, and of having countenanced the establishment of an improper precedent—for it would be intolerable and abominablo if Civil Servants generally were to take up the attitude to their heads that Mr. M'Donald takes up—only by pleading helplessness. And this will confirm the general impression that the Commandant of Junior Cadets is • specially favoured and privileged for his past services as a private person to his present political masters. "*