“COMMITTEE MIND”

Evening Star, Issue 22572, 13 February 1937, Page 25

“COMMITTEE MIND”

GREAT FAILING GF TO-DAY Wickedness has gone out of fashion. Neither in fiction nor in real life are people bad any longer in the old wholehogging way, says Canon “Dick ” Sheppard. But it sometimes seems as if goodness has disappeared as well. We don’t have contrasting black and white, only a uniform sombre grey. Well, human nature has always been a strange mixture. But past generations had the courage of their sins—or of their virtues—in a way that wo haven’t. They did things—good or evil—off their own hat. They accepted personal responsibility for all their actions. To-day a great many of us are dodging that. Wo are trying to narrow down, as much as we can, the sphere jn which we are directly answerable for what we do. We can’t, of course, evade personal responsibility completely. We must still stand on our own feet in our dealings with our family, our friends, and our neighbours. If we break the law and are found out we must take the consequences. But we live in an ago of organisation. And as members of an organisation we sometimes do things which we*should never dream of doing as individuals. It is easier to be mean, or petty, or cruel, if we are acting in company'with others. It is easier still when the victim is someone wo don’t know, who is merely a name on a works wages book or Case No. 199. So we have the characteristic sin of the modern world—the sin of the committee man. We don’t, as a rule, recognise it as. a sin. It doesn’t interfere with our appetite or keep us awake at night. If, occasionally, wo have qualms we shelter behind the decision of the committee or the board. “The committee says so-and-so.” “ The board has decided ” —these familiar phrases help to cover up our personal responsibility. Or we work to regulations laid down by some other hoard or committee higher up. “ Wc can’t go beyond the regulations,” we say, and proceed to

interpret them in a narrow and legalistic way. We’ve become part of a machine—and we’re dealing with men and women. This evil—for it is an evil—extends into every department of modern life. It even poisons the springs of charity. I’m not quite sure when tlie phrase “ cold as charity ” first came into common use. But I think it must have been about the time of the original charity committee. There's no cqldness in the right kind of personal giving. It establishes a warm human relationship. And often the handshake, or the word of encouragement that goes with the material help, is the thing that counts most of all. People who give in this way are sometimes “ stung.” But certain charity committees are so afraid of wasting their funds on the undeserving that those who most need—and most merit —assistance are either denied it altogether or suffer bitter humiliation before they get it. I’m not saying that happens in every case. There aro charity organisers who bring kindness and human sympathy into impersonal giving.

But the big danger in our elaborately systematised benefactions is that we sometimes lose sight of the men and women and children who want to help in a mass of forms and statistics. The charity that is love is strangled by red tape. All highly centralised organisations tend to go dead at the heart. There seems a curse of sterility on all G.H.Q.s, whether in church or State, business or charity. Shut off from the current or common life, they issue their pompous edicts without ever trying to visualise what they will mean to the people affected by them. Have you heard the story of the highly-placed officer who, after the tragedy of Passchendaele had been going on for four months, motored out from general headquarters to visit the scene of operations for the first time? As he saw the desolation of mud that was the battlefield—and before be had reached the worst of the swamp—ho burst into tears. “Good God!” bo cried. “Did wo really send men to fight in that?” That's bow G.H.Q.s work, whatever kind ol G.H.Q. they happen to be.

Only, as a rule, those who thus work havoc with the lives of others don’t see the results they have produced. There seems to be some malevolent magic about Government departments, public authorities, and big official corporations. It doesn’t sour* the milk of human kindness—it just bottles it up and shuts it away during office hours. The people in charge are working on paper, and all they need for that is ink. That, at any rate, would seem the only possible explanation of _ such things as, among others, the continuing tragedy of special areas, the way in which the means test has been permitted to break up family life, and the ironic spectacle of villages where farmers daren’t sell surplus milk to their neighbours at a price they can afford, and babies and expectant mothers go without. But nobody is personally responsible —it’s always the board or the committee or the department. An M.P. once told me how, when a Labour colleague had become a Cabinet Minister, lie took along a deputation from the East End to sec him. Replying to the deputation, the Minister never used the word “ I.” It

was “ the board ” this and “ the board ” that. At last my friend could stand it no longer. He broke in:- “ Steady, my friend. Try to remember the time when I was hanging on to the blooming board’s coat tails inTrafalgar Square, trying to keep it from talking treason!” ■ Now, that Minister was the best type of politician. He sacrificed his career for a principle. He is a humane and kindly man. The truth is that, when we talk about the sin of the committee man, we’re talking about a sin we all share. We may not be members of any board or committee ourselves, but we’ve helped to elect them, or some of them, and we are content to leave them to get on with it. We’ve got the committee habit. We don’t see evil and suffering as a challenge to ourselves. We see it as a problem for a committee or a board. But evil and suffering will go on, the world will remain a place of heartbreak and tragedy for millions until wo all realise that we have a personal responsibility for putting at least our own littlo corner to rights. Wc don’t want committees to tinker , with humanity’s troubles or to create

new ones. We want in our own hearts the faith that moves mountains, and the will to get on with the job of shifting them as our job, and no ond eS ßeHeve me, there are mountain* enough—mountains of misery and wrong—for us to move. The essential thing to remember i* the wisdom of the Founder of Chris* tianity, Who always suggested that people should think, not in terms of “ cases ” and “ applicants ” and “ hands.” but in terms of men, women* and children.