"BUSINESS PRINCIPLES" IN THE PUBLIC SERVICE.
IN the September number of the Nineteenth Century Mr. Edmund Robertson writes a very able and inter- esting contribution under the above title, his object being to help on the work of the Association for securing greater efficiency in our whole administration which has been set on foot in the Xinete,enth, Century. We do not agree with some of Mr. Robertson's proposals, out they are all worth considering, and his whole treatment of the subject is clear and suggestive in a high degree. His first point is that the Services are responsible to Parliament—ie., the House of Commons—and that the main thing is to discover how to make that responsibility effective. In principle we entirely agree, but we are by no means sure that his method of securing responsibility is the best possible. As we understand him, he desires that the Estimates should be handed over to a Committee or Committees, like the Committee on Public Accounts. "I am strongly convinced," says Mr. Robert- son, "of the desirability of submitting the Navy, Army, and Civil Service Estimates to separate Select Com- mittees, before whom the responsible permanent officials might be called to explain and de fend their proposals as the accounting officers explain and defend their accounts before the Public Accounts Committee. The Estimates could be considered in detail by the members of the Committee in the light of these explanations and would then be presented to the House with the report of the Committee thereon." Mr. Robertson goes on to ask whether it is not possible that a like system might be established for the considera- tion of the past administration of the Departments. We are, he tells us, close up to such a system already in the Public Accounts Committee. "A glance at any of the reports of that Committee will show that the questions arising there trench closely upon the province of administration." "The suggestion inevitably occurs that the functions of the Committee should be enlarged so as to include matters of administration as well as matters of account. Possibly an additional Committee might have to be appointed, bat that is a matter of detail. And in addition to this exten- sion of jurisdiction, it would be essential that the reports of the Committee or Committees should by some process or other be subjected to the consideration of the House." The gist of the thing, adds Mr. Robertson, is "that a Select Committee should sit upon the Estimates both before they are voted and after they are executed, with the power of calling before it for examination the officials responsible for proposing them and for administering them."
We do not wish to condemn this proposal off-hand, but there is an objection which, as at present advised, seems to us to be fatal. The proposed Committee, if it were effective—and unless it is effective of what use is it ?- would weaken the responsibility of the head of the Depart- ment There would be a great danger of the Secretary of State for War preparing not the best Estimates and ad- ministering his Department in the best possible way, but of his preparing Estimates which would look well and not invoke opposition before a House of Commons Committee and of shaping his administration so as to make it capable of easy defence. It is quite possible, of course, that some- times the results of supervision by a Parliamentary Com- mittee would be good, but it is more probable that the shadow of the Committee impending over the whole Department would have very disastrous results. Cer- tainly the responsibility of the Secretary of State would be weakened. When once he had satisfied the Committee no one could impugn his conduct. He could always plead this was done or this left undone at the direction of the Committee, or in order to meet objections which he knew would be made by the Committee. In truth, if the Com- mittee were keen and active, as we must assume they would be, they would soon become the real rulers of the Army and Navy, and would decide the policy of both. It is all very well to say that the questions dealt with by them would be purely financial questions, but in truth there are practically no purely financial questions. Money is spent with an object in view, and the question whether it is right to spend or not to spend depends upon whether the object is approved or not. In truth, it might often happen that in deciding for or against a particular Army or Navy vote, the Committee would be really deciding on the foreign policy of the Government. We are all for exacting responsibility, but it seems to us that the only effective way of doing so is to choose a good administrator and to make him responsible for his handling of the Service under his charge. Mr. Robertson himself almost admits this, for he is entirely in favour of keeping up our present system of civilian control,—i.e., control by a Minister selected from one or other of the Houses of Parliament. But what responsibility could be exacted from a Minister who was overshadowed by a Committee of the House of Com mons,—a Committee, remember, which would deal directly and at first hand with the experts ? He would soon become a mere roi fainéant in his own office. In truth, as it seems to us, there would be no effective responsibility anywhere under Mr. Robertson's plan. It would be frittered away between the head of the Department, the House of Commons Committee, and the experts. Depend upon it, that is bad, and far better results will be produced by having a single supreme Minister who shall be responsible, and shall feel himself responsible, for his Department. We have not, unfortunately, got that as yet, but there is every reason why we should. Would it not be the greatest guarantee of efficiency if, when a statesman went to the War Office or the Admiralty, he felt :—' I have the whole responsi- bility on my shoulders, and I must stand or fall by what I do. If I fail, and an account is demanded of me, there is no one behind whom I can shelter myself. The responsibility is solely on me' ? In that case the statesman would feel that he must either get what he deemed necessary for his Department or resign, and no man would care to hold the post who had not confidence in his own judgment and did not feel he knew what he wanted. But that is the kind of man one wants to see at the War Office and the Admiralty. Of course mistakes would very often be made by such men, but at any rate we should not have the pitiable spectacle of Cabinet Ministers saying, as in effect they often say now : Of course I knew this and that was utterly wrong and tried to remedy it, but the Prime Minister, and the Cabinet, and the House of Commons were all indifferent, and the people seemed to "like to have it so," and so I was helpless and could only do half what I wanted to do and what ought to have been done.' What we want is a sense of responsibility so strong that, at any rate in the case of the departments of national defence, the Minister will say : 'If the people "like to have it so " they must do without me, for I will not bear this heavy responsibility unless I can obtain what I deem essential for the national welfare.' We cannot, then, endorse Mr. Robertson's proposal for giving Parliamentary Committees the powers he proposes. Some good might at first be done by his plan, but in the long run it would tend to destroy that clear supreme personal responsibility residing in an individual which is the essence of good administration.
The conclusion of Mr. Robertson's article deals 'very thoughtfully with some of the evils of a highly organised Civil Service. He is not dogmatic, but he shows that in certain particulars we do not conduct our administration on business principles. How far we can get reform here without falling into the worse evils of the "spoils system" is a difficult question and one we cannot discuss here, though we recommend Mr. Robertson's suggestions to the serious consideration of our readers. Mr. Robertson ends his article by dealing with the question of the hour, —the need for a higher standard of efficiency in the British officer. He suggests, and we think wisely, that a little more pay and the discouragement of expenses would give a wider choice and obtain a more business- like officer. But, looking at the question broadly, we do not believe that the officer is at fault half so much as the system. The naval officer is more efficient simply because he is better taught and because he is trained to be a professional. Exact a higher standard of efficiency and get rid remorselessly of those who do not come up to it, not only in war, but in peace time, and you will soon get a s much efficiency in the Arm y as in the Navy. At present there is no effective machinery in the Army for getting rid of incompetent people. As Mr. Robertson says, great uneasiness has been caused by "the apparent absence of any means of bringing responsibility home to officers in the Army for such surrenders, blunders and disasters as have marked the course of the South African War. Again the practice of the Navy occurs to all. During the recent naval manceuvres the Conqueror grounded, and as I write I have before me the results of the courts- martial which followed immediately. One officer has been dismissed his ship, another reprimanded, and a third acquitted. These gallant and unfortunate men were put on their trial in virtue of the stern but salutary provisions of the Naval Discipline Act. By that Act (sec. 29) every person 'who shall designedly or negligently or by any default lose, strand or hazard, or suffer to be lost, stranded or hazarded any ship of her Majesty shall be punished, by dismissal from the service or otherwise. When a ship has been wrecked, lost, destroyed or taken by the enemy, she is deemed to remain in commission until a court-martial shall have been held pursuant to the custom of the Navy, to inquire into the cause of the wreck, loss, destruction, or capture.' And where no specific charge is made against any officer or seaman in respect thereof all the officers and crew may be tried together, and may be required to give evidence, save that nobody shall be bound to criminate himself. A dis- tinguished military officer in the House of Commons averred the other day," adds Mr. Robertson, "that he saw no difference between the disaster of Nichol- son's Nek and the loss of a battleship, and that the one as well as the other should be the subject of inquiry by court-martial." We admit that it is difficult to apply the principle of the Court-Martial to the Army in peace time, but we do not believe it is im- possible to devise means by which the incompetent should be weeded out of the Army. Why should not manceuvres and field-days be deliberately and consciously used for getting rid of the stupid and the ineffective ? If it were known that men at such peace exercises were on their trial we may depend upon it that there would be far greater vigilance than there is at present. It is unjust, it seems to us, to rail at British officers en. masse, and to call them stupid and unbusinesslike. Even if the majority are so, which, however, we cannot admit, it is the nation and the military authorities that have made them so by refusing to train them properly, and by encouraging the survival of the unfit. When once men notice that the unfit get on practically quite as well as the fit the ranks of the unfit are automatically increased. If, on the other hand, the unfit visibly get the worst of it or disappear alto- gether, it is wonderful what a number of men, inspired by the instinct of self-preservation, pass into the ranks of the fit. Once establish that only the fit survive, and men keep themselves fit in order to survive.
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