DAY BY DAY.

Waikato Times, Volume 107, Issue 17980, 27 March 1930, Page 6

DAY BY DAY.

"It is the business of the Civil Service to have* at Civil Servants the service of the and Ministry all past Cabinet Ministers, experience," said Sir Austen Chamberlain in a speech reported in Public Administration. “We Ministers arrive full of ideas which we believe to be novel, as novel as they are excellent; we arc only astonished that our predecessors have never thought of them, and our only anxiety is lest someone should publish them before our Bill is out. Then the civil servant says, ‘ Oh yes, oh yes, I think before you do that perhaps you had better see a memorandum which was written in 1914 on that subject, or the observations which we made for your predecessor when lie put forward the same proposal and .which induced him to drop it.’ That is the first stage. The second stage is to present to the Minister such constructive suggestions as they can develop out of their experience to meet his policy. I remember an argument with one distinguished civil servant who was head of the Post Office when I was Post-master-General, in which, through a long hour, he sought to dissuade me from doing that which I thought it was expedient to do. I w'as glad to have all his arguments against my proposal. When ; I had heard them all, I felt it was unlikely that any .surprise would be sprung upon me in the House of Commons. I now knew the worst, and rightly or wrongly I persisted in my opinion, and expressed my intention of carrying it out. And then my eminent friend discharged Ihe second valuable function of the civil servant. ‘Well,’ he said, •if you will do a iilly thing, of course vou must, but is it essential to you to do it in that silly way?’ And having done his utmost to dissuade me from doing it, he then showed me how to do it with the least friction ,and the smallest disadvantage.’’