Some Problems of an International Civil Service
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9299.1932.tb01859.x |
| Author | H. B. Butler |
| Date | 01 October 1932 |
| Published date | 01 October 1932 |
Some
Problems
of
an International
Civil
Service
By
H.
B.
BUTLER,
C.B.
(Deputy Director, International La
bour
Office)
[Read
before the Institute of Public Administration,
London,
3rd November,
19311
OR
one who has been
a
Civil Servant throughout
his
professional
F
life
and who
is
still
proud to bear the title, though now seconded
from Whitehall for nearly twelve years, it
is
a
special pleasure to be
invited to address
this
Institute. Its existence is,
I
take it, founded
on the belief that administration is as much an art exacting special
aptitudes and careful training
as
the arts of the lawyer, the doctor,
or
the teacher;
that
it
requires a technique and
a
method
of
its own,
which cannot be acquired in
a
day even by the omniscient
"
business
man," who
is
popularly supposed to be better fitted to administer
than the cid servant who has devoted his career
to
practising the
art
of
public -administration.
If
I
ever had any
doubts
as
to the
need of developing special qualities and
a
peculiar habit of mind
in
public officials, they have certainly been completely dispelled by
my experience
of
international administration. Discipline, orderli-
ness, punctuality, attention to detail, capacity for organisation, all
these
are the commonplace but indispensable factors in success in
public service or in private business alike. Without them no office
can
hope to function with smoothness and efficiency. But beyond
these more or less mechanical attributes the public servant is called
upon to possess other more difficult qualities. The most highly
rationalised department, equipped
with
every perfection of
mechanism and organisation,
will
nevertheless fail
in
its
mission
unless it
is
animated by
a
consciousness of its purpose as a part of
the machinery
of
government and
of
its
duty
to the public, from
which government derives its mandate.
I
venture to think that the
British Civil Service owes its reputation not
so
much to the attain-
ment
of
an eminent degree of precision and efficiency (and despite
all
the jibes of the cartoonists
I
should certainly not dispute the
376
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