April 3, 19 19] 



NATURE 



87 



as educators throughout the country already co 

 operate with their friends at the Board of Educa- 

 tion, whom, more and more, they look upon as 

 colleag-ues who share their interests and spend 

 themselves in the same service. Thus will every 

 walk in life come to be regarded as a branch of 

 public service. Just as the Board of Education 

 is aided by the Teachers' Registration Council 

 as an advisory body, so the joint standing indus- 

 trial councils that are being established according 

 to the Whitley Committee's report may, before 

 long, become advisory bodies to the new Minis- 

 tries of Employment, Production, and Supplies. 



The reform of the machinery of Government 

 propHDsed by the Committee would, moreover, 

 render it possible for all the higher officers of 

 the ten Departments to be experts in their respec- 

 tive professions. They would then be better able 

 to work intelligently for a definite purpose than 

 is possible for mere administrators of miscellane- 

 ous regulations. We have advisedly stated that 

 all the higher staff of each of the new offices 

 should be expert; for the Committee, taking the 

 Board of Education as a model, in many respects, 

 of what the new Departments should be, would 

 apparently be content with expertness on the part 

 of the inspectorate alone. We believe, on the con- 

 trary, that the top men inside the new Whitehall 

 offices should be encouraged to spend part of their 

 time outside the office, acquiring intimate personal 

 knowledge of the activities with which their 

 Department is concerned, and of the men who are 

 chiefly responsible for these activities in the 

 country. Insisting, however, as we do, that the 

 Civil Servants of the reformed Departments shall 

 possess exp>ert knowledge, 'we are far from under- 

 estimating the extreme importance of continuing 

 to select only the ablest men for work of the 

 higher division. But we maintain that, unless 

 within a few years of their appointment they show 

 promise of becoming expert in the work of their 

 particular Department, they should be retired 

 from the Service. Able, detached, and serene has 

 been the typical Civil Servant of the past. No 

 less able must be the Civil Servant of the future. 

 Strenuous intellectual discipline must continue to 

 be regarded as a necessary preliminary to enter- 

 ing the higher division of the Civil Service. But, 

 instead of being detached, he must make his work 

 his hobby. He must know his job and love 

 it. "Without passion," said Lord Haldane years 

 ago to the students of Edinburgh University, 

 "nothing great is, or ever has been, accom- 

 pHshed." 



Lord Haldane 's Committee recognises that a 

 more expert Civil Service would require increased 

 Parliamentary control if the danger of bureau- 

 cracy is to be avoided. It suggests that 

 Parliament might retain the necessary control by 

 appointing a series of standing committees, each 

 concerned with the activities of one of the ten 

 Departments. It should, however, be borne in 

 mind that neither this nor any other means of 

 Parliamentary control will be satisfactory unless 

 the personnel of the House of Commons is equal 

 NO. 2579, VOL. 103] 



to these new duties.- In this connection it is well 

 worth considering whether at least half the mem- 

 bers of the House of Commons, instead of only 

 the university representatives, should not be 

 elected on an occupational, instead of on a resi- 

 dential, franchise. As a rule, people engaged in 

 the same branch of national service have in these 

 days far more in common with one another, and 

 would take far more interest in a member who 

 represented them in Parliament than the miscel- 

 laneous folk whose only link is that they chance 

 to reside in the same neighbourhood. 



Lord Haldane's Committee has little to say upon 

 the application of its principle to local govern- 

 ment. Since the destruction of School Boards 

 in 1902, most of the functions of local govern- 

 ment have been performed by county, county 

 borough, and borough councils, the concern of 

 which is not with any particular group of services, 

 but with particular groups of people. We are 

 far from desiring the resuscitation of the old 

 School Boards, or the establishment of small ai 

 hoc bodies for the local control of other services. 

 But we would point out that subdivision of local 

 responsibility for every form of national service, 

 according to borough boundaries, and sometimes 

 according to narrower boundaries still, has an 

 injurious effect upon the efficiency of some of 

 these services quite comparable with that of the 

 present subdivision of responsibility among the 

 different offices in Whitehall. Particularly is this 

 the case with education. The local organisation 

 of education cannot be satisfactorily effected by an 

 authority that is responsible for part only of one 

 complete organism centred in the local university 

 or — as in the case of Manchester and Liverpool 

 — universities. Responsibility for the administra- 

 tion of education throughout such an area might 

 well be entrusted to a department of each of some 

 ten or twelve provincial governments that would 

 be the supreme authorities for the manifold activi- 

 ties of the various minor local authorities in their 

 respective areas. In short, it is as important to 

 apply the principle of Lord Haldane's Committee 

 to local government as to central government. 

 But it will be possible to do so only by enlarging 

 the areas for which the local governments are 

 responsible. 



It remains to add that the transition from war 

 to peace, which renders the reorganisation of some 

 of the machinery of Government inevitable, is the 

 proper time for making the further changes 

 recommended by Lord Haldane's Committee. 

 Their need is urgent. 



SIR E. C. STIRLING, C.M.G., F.R.S. 

 'T^HE death on March 20, in South Australia, of 

 -■■ Sir Edward Charles Stirling, professor of 

 physiology at the University of Adelaide, and 

 director of the South .\ustralian Museum, deprives 

 Adelaide of one of its best-known figures. 



Sir Edward was the eldest son of the Hon. 



- An article in the Titius of January ai, corrected on January 24, has 

 pointed out that the new House of ("ommons contains not one Fellow of the 

 Royal Society who is not either a university member (Sir Joseph I.armor 

 and Sir Wat»on Cheyne) or a Privy Councillor (Mr. Balfour). 



