A REGRETTABLE RETIREMENT

Evening Post, Volume LXXXIII, Issue 24, 29 January 1912, Page 6

A REGRETTABLE RETIREMENT

Tho intended retirement of Mr. F. Waldegrave 'from his high positions in the Civil Service is a matter for deep regret on more grounds than one. He is an officer of wide experience, of high standing, of great popularity, of unquestioned competence, and of singleminded devotion to his official duties. He is not the kind of officer that makes & reputation and gets promotion by the arts of advertisement or by assiduously ■ ingratiating himself with the powers that be. The faithful performance of his duty has been the old-fashioned and prosaic secret of Mr. Waldegrav&'s success. It us not to bo wondered at that he was old-faahioned in his methods, for he entered the service as long ago as 1874. In twenty-two years he had worked' himself up to the position, of Under-Secretary for Justice, the highest permanent officer in the Justice Department. It is in that position, which he has held for more than fifteen years, that Mr. Waldegrave lias made I himself best known, but at the begin 1 ning of 1910 he had, as Commissioner of Police, to undertake still more i arduous responsibilities. Th© strain was doubtless a severe one, for the enquiry which resulted in Mr. Waldegrave's appointment had ehown that in some respects the department stood in serious need of reorganisation. But the initial difficulties have been overcome by the new Commissioner in a manner that fully justifies the public confidence in hU fkjggoi&tnjeatt ftnd it # J# ' therefore

the more surprising and the more regrettable that he should now have found it necessary to resign. The resignation unfortunately does not affect this office only. It carries with ft Mr. Waldcfirave's complete severance from the service with which he lias been honourably associated for nearly forty yeart>. The loss of so experienced and to valuable a public servant would at any time be a matter for regret. The service will be much the poorer for his loss, and how is 1 the gap to be filled? It will, of course, be said that no man is indispensable, that there , are as good fish in the sea as ever came out of it, and that in a few years custom will have taught us to Tegard the place oi Mr. Waldegrave's successor as no less* hard to fill than his own now appears to be. Full weight must be allowed to these considerations, yet after doing bo one may still be allowed to ask whether in such a case as the present they cover the whole ground. Does not Mr. Waldegrave really represent a type oi Civil servant which we are not growing in, these days, or, at any rate, not growing to the extent which prevailed a generation ago? The Civil Service still abounds in upright and capable men, but it seems to us impossible to say that tbe initiative and independence of its highest officer* are encouraged, now to anything like tho came degree as former ly. Democracy has entered into its own in this country during the last twenty years, and vte are all fond of parading its triumph*. But the politicians who have promoted those triumphs have, undoubtedly, in their management of the Civil Service, done more for themselves than either for the service itself or foithe democracy. Direct Ministerial control has been extended to all sorts of petty administrative details in a manner that has sapped the independence and compromised the dignity even of the highest officers. The most striking evidence of this degradation that has reached the public eye was the surprised admission of a previous Commissioner of Police, when confronted before the Police Commission* of 1808 with a pre-Sed' donian minute, that he seemed k» have had at that time the power to appoint and promote on his own account. It was so long since he had exercised an independent authority that he had actually forgotten about it ! With the change of administration that now appears to be imminent there is a reasonable prospect of a reversion to the independence of an earlier day. The servitude of the Civil Service has been so constantly tho burden of the Opposition's song that it is reasonable to expect 1 from Mr. Masaey a large measure of emancipation. The men that are needed to make the best of the day of emancipation are such as Mr. Waldegrave, and it is on this ground, as well as on the more obvious ones, that we regret to see them falling out of tho ranks one after^ another.