Page:A Nation in Making.djvu/339

to love them.' I tried to make every subordinate of mine in a res- ponsible position who came in contact with me feel that I trusted him, and my confidence was well repaid.

I further fclt that I stood face to face with the traditions of a great office, with rules and methods of procedure built up by generations of experienced administrators, which I was bound to respect, and which could only slowly be modified. Our critics and even our friends expected that we should, on our assumption of office, do great things and inaugurate vast changes. They forgot that we had not a tabula rasa upon which we might inscribe anything we pleased, and that no one could assume charge of the duties of a great department of the State with his bundle of first principles, if he had any, and straightway give effect to them in the practical work of administration. That work, in its most difficult and controversial aspects, resolved itself into a series of compromises, where the application of principles has to be determined by the circumstances of each case. The result is not always satisfactory to the Minister or the Member in charge, and even less so to the public. Disappoint- ment follows; criticism is inevitable, while the unfortunate author of progressive measures, which but imperfectly come up to his own ideals or expectations, is prevented by the vow of silence and the obligations of his office from revealing the secrets of his prison- house. In countries where Parliamentary institutions have long been established all this is understood, and where there are party organizations and party organs the encouraging approval of a sec- tion of the public is readily obtained; and the Minister has not to continue from week's end to week's end his wearisome journey through the chill and suffocating atmosphere of hostile criticism, unrelieved by any sort of approbation, except that of his own conscience.. That indeed is a cold comfort, but that is the only sort of comfort, the only form of solace, that we have had in the dreary journey, which for me is now at an end, and which I am not pre- pared to renew, except in circumstances very different from those that now prevail.

I have referred at some length to the atmosphere inside the Secretariat. Even under the new regime it is bound to be an important factor. The Minister formulates the policy of his depart- ment; but it is the permanent officials who have to carry it out and work out the details; and it is these details that in many cases impart shape and colour to the policy. An ideal policy without reference to details is no policy at all. But while there was all this