May 13, 1922] 



NATURE 



609 



Letters to the Editor. 



{The Editor does not hold himself responsible for 

 opinions expressed by his correspondents. Neither 

 can he undertake to return^ or to correspond with 

 the writers of, rejected tnanuscripts intended for 

 this or any other part of Nature. No notice is 

 taken of anonymous communications^ 



Science at the Post Office. 



I HAVE always regarded expressions of opinion in the 

 leading articles of Nature as founded on ascertained 

 facts impartially considered, and it is therefore with 

 much regret that I feel impelled to protest against 

 the article entitled " Science at the Post Office," 

 which appears on the front page of your issue of 

 April I. 



I shall try to put the writer's main contentions, 

 and my replies to them, very briefly, 

 (i) Complaints regarding the telephone service after the 

 war are closely connected with the question of the 

 technical qualifications of the engineering staff. 

 This is not true in the sense intended to be conveyed. 

 It is the easiest matter in the world to demonstrate 

 that the complaints do not arise from any conditions 

 involving science or research, but are due to the 

 quite simple and commonplace fact that the home 

 service had suffered for five years by the withdrawal 

 of over 13,000 of its engineering staff for military 

 duties, and by the loss of a large proportion of its 

 experienced telephone operators. 



The telephone system transferred to the State in 

 igi2 was in urgent need of reconstruction and 

 extension on a great scale. Such work on what may 

 be called a living organism, and one very complex 

 and sensitive, has to be carefully planned and executed. 

 It was in full swing in 1914, when it had to be 

 abandoned at the call of vital national necessity. 

 Its resumption after the war w^as attended for some 

 time by great and well-known difficulties in the supply 

 of materials and in the retransformation of factories 

 to peace conditions. It is now well in hand again. 

 New operators have been trained, and what is needed 

 to put things right is the construction of exchange 

 buildings, switch-boards, and cable plant in adequate 

 volume. The same conditions have applied to all 

 nations involved in the war, and have no direct 

 relation to the efficiency or scientific attainments of 

 their engineering staffs. Nowhere was the post-war 

 deterioration of telephone service more conspicuous 

 than in the United States of America, although the 

 depletion of telephone resources in that country 

 lasted for less than half the time, and was propor- 

 tionately very much less serious than in Great Britain. 

 (2) A scheme, introduced in 1907, for recruiting 25 

 per cent, of P.O. engineers by open competition 

 has remained in abeyance since 191 2, and has 

 now been replaced by a scheme whereby only 20 

 per cent, of new entrants will be obtained by open 

 competition. 

 The implication here is that standards of qualifica- 

 tion, set up by a former Engineer-in-Chief, are now 

 being reduced, but the facts are quite otherwise. 

 There were good reasons for suspending the scheme 

 in 191 2, as practically the whole engineering staff 

 of the National Telephone Company was then trans- 

 ferred to the Post Office, and had to be equitably 

 absorbed in its engineering organisation. Since the 

 war very few new appointments to the engineering 

 classes have been made. The scheme of 1907 pro- 

 vided for the admission of college-trained youths by 

 an examination considerably lower than that of an 

 engineering university for a science degree. The 

 present scheme requires all candidates to possess a 



NO. 2741. VOL. 109] 



science degree before they are eligible to sit for the 

 competition for Assistant Engineerships, and the 

 character of the examination is fully equal to the 

 degree examination of the universities. 



Another important point ignored in your article 

 is that the present scheme has set up a separate open 

 competitive examination, for which young men who 

 have studied at universities and technical colleges are 

 eligible. The character of this examination is a 

 little lower than that for graduate Assistant Engineers, 

 and successful competitors will be appointed as 

 " Inspectors " in the Engineering Department. In 

 this position they will be eligible, along with other 

 selected Post Office employees, for a further series of 

 competitive examinations for a further 20 per cent, 

 of the vacancies for Assistant Engineerships (in the 

 same subjects as in the examination for graduates 

 but of a slightly less advanced grade) as well as for 

 promotion in ordinary course. It is therefore a wide 

 departure from the truth to say or imply that the 

 proportion of full-time college men among recruits 

 for Post Office engineerships has been limited to 

 20 per cent. And, quite apart from these outside 

 recruits, I maintain emphatically that no man who 

 is not, in the best sense of the word, a college student 

 has any chance of appointment as a Post Office 

 engineer. The fact that a man has had the grit and 

 capacity to win his spurs by evening studies, extending 

 over a period of many years, while following his daily 

 employment is, to my mind, the reverse of a dis- 

 qualification. Among the thousands of young men 

 in the lower grades of the Post Office Engineering 

 Department there exists a splendid recruiting ground 

 for the higher positions. These men are selected 

 with care in the first instance, and they are watched 

 and reported on with equal care. They know that 

 promotion depends on character and efficiency. 

 The idea of " the field-marshal's baton " is rife among 

 them, and I, for one, sincerely hope that the Post 

 Office will always give it full encouragement. I have 

 no fear of being charged, in any informed quarter, 

 with belittling the need for mathematical and 

 scientific attainments of the highest order in con- 

 nection with the telegraph and telephone services. 

 But the field of the Post Office Engineering Depart- 

 ment is so wide that its everyday work calls for 

 qualifications of many different kinds, and I speak 

 from knowledge and experience when I say that the 

 engineer who combines high character and business 

 and administrative capacity with long Post Office 

 training and continuous self-education is an officer 

 of first-class practical value for whom there will 

 always be abundant room. 



(3) The Chiefs of the Post Office Engineering Depart- 

 ment should be men from outside the department, 

 who have reached a position of eminence in the 

 general engineering profession. 

 I need not say much on this point. Two of my 

 four Post Office predecessors in the position of 

 Engineer-in-Chief, during the past thirty years have 

 been Presidents of the Institution of Electrical 

 Engineers, and others have only been prevented by 

 the shortness of their term of office from attaining 

 the same position. No one who understands the 

 complexity of modern telegraph and telephone 

 engineering will contest the statement that the 

 position of Engineer-in-Chief will be better filled by 

 the most highly qualified telegraph and telephone 

 engineer and administrator in the country than by 

 the most highly qualified general engineer. The 

 American Bell Telephone Organisation is rightly held 

 up to us as a model. In no case would the heads of 

 that organisation dream of appointing a chief engineer 

 who had not spent the main part of his lifetime in 



