Springfield Globe Republic

Real Defect of the French Civil Service System—Personal Grievances.

No system is so perfect but it has its reverse side. This brings me to the real defect of the French civil service system, which is slowness and red-tapism. No one who has not experienced it can imagine the tediousness of French official routine. As far as I can determine it most of this is due to traditional usages and somewhat to national characteristics.

For instance, "time is not money" to the Frenchman. He has an idea of business methods and precision, but none of business dispatch with a view to personal advantage. He does not care to make money if he has to do it inconveniently or in a hurry. Again, the Frenchman is brought up to discipline; he is accustomed to self-restraint in family and society, and submits contentedly to authoritative regulations which guarantee him privileges as well as impose upon him obligations.

Whether this is so or not, it is certain that, in every situation and in every affair in which red-tapism and delay would enrage the American, the Frenchman awaits the slow turning of official cogs with astonishing equanimity. It is for this reason, perhaps, that the Frenchman makes no attempt to rectify a personal grievance by manifesting his indignation in the newspapers. The French people having no sympathy for sufferings of this description, and appeal to "outraged public opinion," which does not exist, has no effect.

In America it is quite different. Time, to the active business man, is money. If a government official should mar his operations by making him wait, the offender would soon hear of it in such a public manner as to endanger his place. Especially would this be the case in a civil service organization like that of the French, not open to the attacks of mere partisan journals.—Paris Cor. New York Times.