Foreign News: Incorrupt Indiscretion

Undercover investigators for Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin completed last week what London papers called the most successfully secret probe ever made within the British Civil Service. It came as a “complete surprise” to even the top-flight officials of the Air Ministry when one night Squire Baldwin dismissed the Permanent Secretary to the Air Ministry, Sir Christopher Llewellyn Bullock.

Since the British Civil Service is by definition impeccable and incorruptible, and since the permanent secretary of a ministry—such as Sir Warren Fisher at the Treasury or Sir Robert Vansittart at the Foreign Office—is always rated as of finer moral fibre, higher intelligence and greater ability than the political transients who serve as His Majesty’s Ministers, the dismissal of Sir Christopher Bullock last week implied, at the least, some sort of scandalous corruption somewhere. Nevertheless, because no permanent official of the Civil Service can well be charged with corruption without tarnishing its spotless record, Prime Minister Baldwin, afterordering Sir Christopher dismissed, made a ringing public announcement. “I am glad to observe,” cried John Bull in the flesh, “that no question of corruption was involved!”

The offense of 100% incorrupt Sir Christopher Bullock was “indiscretion,” almost the only offense with which a British Civil Servant is ever charged. In reporting to the Prime Minister the investigators indicated their feeling that the Permanent Secretary to the Air Ministry had looked forward to quitting the Civil Service and becoming Chairman of Imperial Airways, and with this in mind hadsuggested that “a high honor should be conferred upon [Sir Eric Campbell] Geddes [now Chairman of Imperial Airways] in recognition of his work in establishing Empire air mail services.”

In other words a peerage for Sir Eric was to be swapped for a chairmanship for Sir Christopher. This sort of thing is often tolerated in cases where the swapper is an ordinary politician; but, the report released by the Prime Minister declared: “We think the whole course of proceedings shows, on the part of Bullock, a lack of that instinct and perception from which is derived a sure guide by which the conduct of Civil Servants should be regulated.”

Thus Sir Christopher Bullock had his career broken last week without anything specific being brought out against him. Among British aviators, the viewwas that Sir Christopher is easily worth ten of the men who investigatedand broke him. A wounded War veteran with a silver tube in his stomach,the ousted Permanent Secretary of the Air Ministry was brilliant, driving, egotistical, efficient and a master of every technique in Government aviation except watching his tongue and saying the regulation thing where other and silkier Civil Servants were concerned. As for Sir Eric Geddes, airmen assumed that he was vexed because he had not got a peerage and still more vexed because the events of last week will make it hard for King Edward to give him one soon. To Sir Christopher’s defense leaped The Aeroplane, No. 1 British aviation weekly, praising his “marvelous work” for the Air Ministry, voicing “indignation” at his dismissal. At the Air Ministry, Civil Servants greeted with sly satisfaction the appointment of a new Permanent Secretary this week who is definitely silky, Colonel Sir Donald Banks, hitherto the pleasant Director General of the British Post Office.

In defending himself, Sir Christopher Bullock made the startling statement that the Chairman of Imperial Airways gets $10,000 per year, while the Permanent Secretary of the Air Ministry gets $15,000. This disclosure jarred the conventional belief of Britons that their Civil Servants are “poorly paid,” and constantly get fat offers from British business which they nearly always refuse because of their loyalty to public service. Sir Christopher maintained that if he had succeeded Sir Eric as Chairman of Imperial Airways it would have been at a salary step-down of $5,000 per year.

Flatly denying that any swap had ever been intended, and freely admitting that any Air Ministry official may have in the back of his mind that he might “at some indefinite future date, years ahead” find himself working for Imperial Airways, Sir Christopher cried:

“What a world of difference is there between give-and-take living talk and the stale dead ashes of conversations raked over and microscopically dissected after many months! “The whole atmosphere and emphasis are changed. Transitions from one subject to another are blurred. Phrases taken from the context and subjected to a frigid post-mortem are hardly recognizable.”

Automatically, every scandal or near-scandal touching His Majesty’s Government is turned into matter of congratulation by the London Times—even in cases like the recent enforced resignation of Secretary of State for Colonies “Jim” Thomas whom everyone considered guilty (TIME, June i et ante). Of perhaps wholly innocent Sir Christopher Bullock the Times said last week:

“The real tragedy is not that the public service loses a remarkable man, but that so fine a record should have ended under a cloud.

“The Civil Service, above all, is to be congratulated. It will not suffer in the end for this ruthless exposure of how high is its standard and rigorous its code.”