OATH OF LOYALTY

Evening Post, Volume CXXXII, Issue 82, 3 October 1941, Page 4

OATH OF LOYALTY

(To the Editor.)

Sir, —A conspicuous position in your issue of October 1 is given, under the ! above heading, to extracts from cor-1 respondence and statements at interviews between the Dominion executive i of the R.S.A. and the Attorney-General with reference to persons employed in the Public Services being compelled to affirm their loyalty to the Crown or, face the alternative of dismissal. Apparently it is intended to imply that I there are known disloyalists in the employ of the State, and that the Minister is side-stepping the issue in his asking the R.S.A. executive to be specific in its references to Departments and the individuals therein who are deemed to be unworthy of continued employment. To anyone who knows the full purport of the affirmation of loyalty that State servants make and (to their gen- j eral credit) live up to from the initial stages of employment right through national vicissitudes of peace and war it is an unwarranted slur on thousands of exceptionally loyal workers for the R.S.A.. or any other organisation, to entertain and pursue charges of unworthiness based on generalities. I use the terms "exceptionally loyal workers" advisedly, because State servants perform many duties entailing confidential information that is kept inviolate and is. therefore, beyond the conception of the general public. Why, then, should loyalty, that is none the less sincere because it is unobtrusive, have to be reaffirmed at the behest of those who are not prepared to be specific in their representations on the matter? Had the R.S.A. a full appreciation of the deep-rooted loyalty of State servants generally, or of the strict discipline for enforcing it where exceptional cases arise, then they surely would not have charged the Minister with being unreasonable in asking them to supply particulars, or would they have maintained an attitude of dealing in generalities by asking the Minister whether he approved the principle that they expected to see enforced. However, there was one aspect of the R.S.A.'s exchanges with the Mm ister in which there was a specific reference, and that was to the State Departments not under the control of the Public Service Commissioner. There are only two, the largest, they being the Railways and the Post and Telegraph. lam particularly con- j cerned with the latter, which has a personnel of approximately 12,000, whose loyalty 1 claim to be above reproach. One-sixth of the*staff is now on active service, along with the sons of others who are returned soldiers; while the collective desire of those who remain is to mind their own business and get on with the job. Does the executive of the R.S.A. include this body of State servants in its innuendoes?—l am, etc., * H. MeKENZIE,