When men reflect about government, whether practically or academically, they always turn up, if they think deeply enough, two central problems: first, how to ensure that government shall do what it is supposed to do, and secondly, how to ensure that it shall not do other things. One is the problem of efficiency, the other the problem of control; and around the two is built most, perhaps all, of the so-called science of politics. At some periods the need for control seems the more vital and pressing. It seemed so to Englishmen, for example, during the two centuries following the accession of the Stuarts. At other times and places the pendulum has swung in the opposite direction, and in fifteenth century Europe, as in contemporary Italy, the dominant desire was for government strong enough and untrammelled enough to stem successfully a rising tide of disorder. Each age strikes its own balance in favor of one principle or the other, and thereby touches the opposite principle into action to redress the balance at some new point of readjustment.

The competing claims of efficiency and control have often expressed themselves in the form of controversy concerning the comparative merits of government by discretion and govern-ment by law—or, in Harrington's phrase, a government of laws and a government of men. In this form the conflict has left its mark everywhere on political thought since Aristotle. Discretion means freedom for government to choose among possible alternatives of action. As one judge has said, “In honest plain language it means ‘Do as you like.’” It is thus a condition of efficiency, but it is very apt to exact the price of arbitrariness. Law, on the other hand, requires that government shall act by set rule, shall limit itself to a particular way of acting in each particular situation. It seeks to eliminate choice in favor of certainty; it narrows the possible range of governmental action in order that such action may be predicted and controlled in advance.

To comment upon the far-reaching effects of modern warfare upon national life is in these days commonplace. Nevertheless, nearly ten years after Versailles, countless ramifications of the World War's long-term effects remain unexplored. Silent but profound social and political readjustments were set in motion which are only now beginning to be studied by trained observers of human institutions, while the public at large scarcely suspects what is going on.

The administrative organization of France has not escaped these subtle processes. A bureaucratic inheritance surviving a half-dozen political revolutions, it has perhaps been more deeply shaken by events of the last fifteen years than in any period of similar length since the French Revolution itself. Some of these changes bid fair to modify not only the popular attitude toward the ubiquitous fonctionnaire, but the organization and spirit of the civil service as well.

For a proper understanding of the causes and significance of this administrative evolution, we must revert for a moment to the scene as it appeared in 1914. Then the public service of France was a highly centralized hierarchical organization, with a democratic façade, but resting none the less upon the imperial foundations laid by Napoleon. There were as many as 900,000 persons in public employment, including the staffs of the départements and the communes. As in America to-day, the man in the street was sure this number was excessive. He remembered, doubtless, that France had done very well with 40,000 civil servants in Balzac's day, when the population of the country was only a fourth smaller than in 1914. Why, then, were twenty times as many needed in the twentieth century? As a matter of fact, the French public service made use of a staff which was, in proportion to population, no larger than the English or the American, especially if it be remembered that over 150,000 public school teachers and several thousand telegraph and telephone employees were among the 900,000 civil servants mentioned.

A bloc system has superimposed itself upon national legislatures. Although their members are elected on a definite territorial basis, they associate themselves together in response to interests in their constituencies which have little relation to their electoral districts. Thus, in the United States, a foreign word has come into use to designate the organized agricultural interests which constitute the farm bloc.

More or less definite aggregations of this kind have been formed throughout parliamentary history. Some of these have been the result of particular manufacturing or commercial interests; other groupings have followed religious or social-class lines of cleavage; nevertheless, the basis of representation, in the popularly elected chambers, has remained territorial. Since 1919, however, an international assembly has been built up on a new political pattern. This is the Conference of the International Labor Organization, which convened for its tenth session at Geneva, in May, 1927, and in the following October completed the eighth year of its history. Notwithstanding the fact that structurally this body has a national basis, in that the delegates are sent by different member states, the conferences derive their character and mode of operation, not so much from the member states as from the three component groups in which national differences are more or less subordinate. These groups represent, respectively, the governments, the employers, and the workers of the several countries.

The following pages represent an experiment. They are devoted to an initial attempt to summarize the most important events in the field of public administration in the United States for a calendar year. A series of such summaries, if they could be made reasonably complete, would presumably be of substantial value, at least to the academic world; the present survey, incomplete and unsatisfactory from many points of view, may at least serve as a point of departure for later enlargements and improvements. I am indebted to many correspondents for assistance in gathering the materials on which it is based; and I acknowledge my gratitude to them, without implicating them in the result.

Administrative Reorganization. Although the movement for reorganization of public administration has slowed down, significant steps were taken in 1927. Two large-scale state reorganizations were effected, in California and Virginia, the latter following a careful survey by the National Institute of Public Administration.

In California the bulk of the state work is consolidated in nine departments, the directors of which comprise the governor's council. This is an interesting legal reconstruction of the governor's council inherited from the eighteenth century in Massachusetts, Maine, and New Hampshire. The department of finance (Chap. 251) is given general powers of supervision over all matters concerning financial and business policies of the state, including specifically authority to audit, to visit and inspect institutions, and with the governor to authorize expenditures in excess of appropriations.

The charter group was again successful in the November elections in Cincinnati and retained the six seats won in the first contest, while the Republican organization lost one seat to an Independent candidate. Seven of the nine councilmen were reёlected to office. The victory of the charter ticket was due in large measure to public approval of the unusual accomplishments of the last two years, and in part to the political sagacity of the leaders throughout the series of campaigns. The election of 1924, which resulted in the adoption of the council-manager form of government with a council chosen by proportional representation, and the election of two years ago which “kept the charter in the hands of its friends,” have been described in the pages of this journal. It was appreciated that the real test of the reform movement would come at the election of 1927 when the charter party would be on the defensive. This test has now been met.

Cincinnati was fortunate in the character of the men who composed the first council under the new system. They employed a manager with administrative ability, a charm of manner which quickly ingratiated him with the people, and a personality which complemented the personal qualities of the councilmen themselves. These men elected by the people did not refuse leadership, and the mayor especially has become a dominant force in the community. The combination of Mayor Seasongood and Manager Sherrill is an unusual one. The former is a leader of reform; the latter, the man to carry out the policies which the representatives determine upon. Consequently, the manager himself never became a campaign issue. Both groups pledged him support. As the mayor said of him, “He personifies the people's own desire for good government.”

No one of the many changes in the English constitution during the World War is more interesting than the establishment of the cabinet secretariat. The device came into being under the stress of war-time conditions, as a result of the complexity of the problems to be dealt with, and of the need for centralizing the activities of the government. Its retention after many other features of the war administration have proved only transitory is an example of the permanence that war-time institutions sometimes acquire.

Before the war no minutes of cabinet meetings were kept. The only record of cabinet decisions was contained in the letter which the prime minister wrote with his own hand to the sovereign, reporting only those decisions which he thought should be brought to the sovereign's attention. A copy of each letter was kept for reference by the prime minister. Since it was considered bad form to take notes in cabinet meetings, individual members had to depend upon memory when proceeding to apply cabinet decisions in their own departments. Such procedure was unbusinesslike, and was one of the factors that rendered the cabinet system cumbrous and inefficient in the conduct of a great war. The War Cabinet needed an agency to prepare information for its consideration, to keep an accurate record of the many and vitally important decisions it made, and to transmit those decisions to the departments charged with ultimately carrying them into effect. Under such circumstances, the cabinet secretariat came into existence.