MARGINAL COMMENT
By HAROLD NICOLSON
IT is generally held that it is the Civil Servants who in truth govern this country and that the bureaucratic machine turns out much the same commodity whether there be a Conservative or a Socialist Prime Minister in Downing Street. It is often contended that the experienced Civil Servant knows that Ministers are much the same whatever be the colour of their politics, and that what determines administration is not the energies or ideals of any politician but the " accumulated weight of experience," or in other words, " the files." The elder Civil Servant is represented as having acquired a certain aloofness from Cabinet Ministers, being indifferent to whether Amurath to Amurath succeed, and attending to each new arrival with a deferential yawn. It might be, moreover, that the historian, in examining the files and minutes of any given office, would observe that the bull, after a few fast whisks with his tail, settles down quite softly into his china-shop and that the new broom ceases to sweep. Permanent Under- Secretaries have an inveterate habit of being right, and it thus comes that when Mr. Sid Jones, M.P., becomes Secretary of State in the place of the Marquis of Hampshire the orderly sequence of the minutes, after a few days' flurry, settles down to its course. Invariably had the Permanent Under-Secretary placed before Lord Hampshire, not only the pros and cons, but also the precedents for any given course, and as invariably had his Lordship dipped his pen into the silver inkstand and written " I agree with Sir Charles." Even so, after a very few days, will Mr. Sid Jones unclip his fountain-pen from his waistcoat and write " Sir Charles seems to me correct."
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