IN RED TAPE FILES

Evening Post, Issue 50, 27 August 1935, Page 14

IN RED TAPE FILES

UNOFFICIAL HUMOUR

ENLIVENING DAILY WORK

FAMOUS INSTANCES

Official files, tied up with the proverbial red -tape, are usually for-bidding-looking things, writes Sir Austen Chamberlain in the "DailyTelegraph." It stakes a little time to know where to look and what to read among the mass of papers which accumulate about most subjects, and the minutes written upon them, able and instructive as they are, are generally strictly confined to a plain statement of the point involved and of the action recommended. .But occasionally humour breaks out even in these discouraging surroundings. Mark Sykes (the late Sir Mark Sykes, M.P.), once delighted his friendsby illustrating the stock openings of Treasury letters—"My Lords are surprised to learn. . . ." "My Lords are surprised to observe. . , ." and so forth—by five little men. Fairneld .at the Colonial Office occasionally illustrated his minutes ;' in a I like' manner.. He prepared a brief for my' father's interview with the Bechuana'. Chiefs in the form, of an imaginary .conversation. - "It'was wholly admirable," said my fattier; "only the Chiefs did not give the answer he, had expected, as when, on.my saying to Khama: 'You ask too much,' he replied: 'How can he ask too much to whom everything belongs?' Fairfield'had not foreseen that retort, and had supplied no answer to it." . . CHARITY AND THE POLE. The brier ended with instructions to the, Chiefs as.to their behaviour when presented'to the Queen at "Windsor. "This," added Fairfleld, "is to prevent this kind of tiling," and there followed a sketch of three little black men in the scantiest raiment' turning back somersaults^ into the presence of a shocked and startled Sovereign. The Qtieen'- had • indeed expressed a wish thatHhe'y should appear in their native costume. My father had the task of explaining that it was unsuitable to the Throne room.' Going in unannounced to see Lloyd George on one f occasion when I lived next' him' in Downing Street, I found him chuckling over a file of papers. ".What's the joke?" I asked. It was the first minute which had reached him from.Hilton Young, who,had just ber come,' Financiall Secretary -of the Treasury.; -, '■/■' '• \. ■ An' application had been made to the Prime Minister for a substantial grant for Antarctic exploration, which the Exchequer was at that time in no posi- ' 'tioityp affor'dv -It had been referred in 'the'."pridihary .course"..to the Financial Secretary, ,who > had minuted: "This may surely tee refused. The South Pole is far away, and if Charity begins there, it will be a long time before she reachjs home." Lloyd" George remarked that an amusing article might be written on official minutes, and we began to recall some. There was Bright's famous minute: written when- he was; President of the Board-of Trade: "I have'read Mr.- Giffen's .very able and interesting memorandum. '-I do not clearly apprehend {.whether; he approves •or disapproves the, proposal which he discusses, but in any case I agree with-him." V" "' ■ A' "MASTER. ' ' Mr. Giffen, later Sirßobert Gi2en, was, if I am not mistaken, at that time the,; principal statistical; officer. of the department, and an ' acknowledged auttiorityf on his;own subjects. Ifre- > quired' a man assure of himself and as grandly'simple'as John Bright thus to avow his 1 own limitations while . adopting-the [advice of-one in'whose judgment he placed trust. Then there was the minute of a 1 former Minister of Education, which is, • I believe, still religiously guarded in .the archives of that Department. Mark- ; ing some passage in a long memoran- ! dum with a pointing hand in the margin, the Minister i had added: "This is ! the'colonel of the whole question." t When I myself was made Secretary [ of the. Treasury, at the end of, the . year'l9oo, there was still in progress • a correspondence with the, Admiralty > about the salary of one of'the principal I officers of a branch for which, as-Civil : Lord, I had 'been responsible. It was • known at the Treasury that the Ad--1 miralty letters, though purporting ,-to " emanate from "My Lords" and signed " by the Permanent Secretary, had ■in ' fact been written by me. So far they had been dealt with by , my predecessor in my new post. In the . natural course it would be to me that the ,last Admiralty letter ( would now come, -arid it 'could not .be separated from the file to which it belonged. It — was an 'awkward dilemma; many marginal notes and' minutes were written , in'that file'which had never been in'j&nded for' my -eye. - ""■l^liave ''always thought that - Sir Francis Mowatt, then Permanent Secretary of the Treasury, acted with equal 'skill and candour when -he placed the whole file before me, and: .remarking' that obviously many things / would have been differently expressed if my arrival at the Treasury had been foreseen* and reminding me that I was now in the position of the poacher - turned gamekeeper, added that I should here find what was' to be. said on the ■ other^side.' He undertook that if I would give fair consideration to* the Treasury case he would accept my decision, whatever'it might be, without carrying ,the matter _ to the Chancellor^ BESPECT FOR METHODS. The Treasury "objections failed to convince me, as-Sir Francis had, of I course, foreseen; but r gained a respect for Treasury methods, and for once I had the chance, so rarely vouchsafed I to;us, "to see ourselves as others see. us." • There was nothing in the mar-' ginal notes to feed my vanity. One! of-them/ran simply: "This'is silly." I think itcfairly epitomised them aIL ■_ Of Hhe. men who have served with me in- various offices, Sir George Mur-. ray, long 'since.,retired from office, but happily' still with us, did most to' lighten ''official labours. He was raciest; in conversation as when, haying failed to persuade me that something I proposed to do was inexpedient, he •' asked: --"Well, if you must do a silly thing like that, is it necessary that you should do it in such a d silly way?" and. proceeded to indicate a much better-method, of ...carrying out my, idea. Again, when he had at last wrung from me a confession that a Post Office appointment which I had suggested and he had;"oppoSe'd,'was not-wholly uninfluenced by Parliamentary considerations, he cynically' exclaimed: "Oh! 'if it's a job, why did you not say so at once? It's as good-as done." , Asquith -when Chancellor told me that he had*''~had before' him a proposal for the construction "of an underground passage, from the War Office to the Horse Guards with; cellars where: papers might be. stored and work carried on in case of aerial attack, upon which Murray had'minuted: "This may be safely turned down. No sane enemy, acquainted with our institutions, would destroy the War Office." ms idea. Such flashes of humour in these dusty files are as'rare as angels' visits, but my memory retains two other instances of Murray's caustic wit. When Postmaster-General I had drawn up "-. an elaborate-brief for the use of members of Parliament who were much

troubled with Post Office '-'grievances" and did not know the answer. I had passed it to Murray with a request that he would examine it critically and make any alterations ho.thought desirable. He returned it to me with the following brief comment: "PostmasterGeneral,—This is like the White Knight's'story—very long, but very, very beautiful."

Later,, when we were both at the Treasury, I asked. Sir George to take the first opportunity of ascertaining verbally from Sir Anthony MacDonnell, then Under-Secretary in Ireland, what he meant by the "co-ordination" of the Irish Office, a subject on which both he and George Wyndham, (Chief Secretary for Ireland) were favouring [us with a correspondence which was as obscure as it was voluminous.

I had; hot'long to wait for an answer: "I have seen Sir Anthony MacDonnell as you desired," Murray minuted to me, s "As far as I can make out, .what he means by co-ordination is the subordination of everyone else to hitn-self'-^which is riot a bad definition of what is usually meant by the blessed word co-ordination in the mouth of a masterful personality.

The Indian and Foreign Offices gave less scope for such sallies, though there was one Ambassador, at least, whose dispatches were not only full of good sense and shrewd observation, but were generally lit up by some flash of humour which made them doubly welcome. Dispatches from the Government of India, and even the Viceroy's letters, were uniformly grave nnd strictly confined to the business in f hand, but one occasionally, got a startling flashlight on happenings that seemed to belong to another age as they certainly belonged to another civilisation.