Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1927-01-09
DECLARES i. S. NEVER HAD
BETTER PUBLIC OFFICIALS
Yale Professor Denies Course i'm Polit-
ical Science Would Put Higher
Grade Men in Charge.

our public officials are mere puppets.
| have served with a good many of
! them and have found them enCourag-
| ingly independent. What has I'M
pressed me most about our State leg
| islators is their intense desire to find
out the right thing to do and to do it.
If one is inclined to be pessimistic.
let him only compare conditions as
they are today with conditions as
they Were-say, 30 years ago-and
note the tremendous progress that has
been made through reforms introduced
60 gradually as to be almost imper-
ceptible,
| ITO take one OF many possible eX-
amples, 80 years ago in some Legis-
| latureS bribery was open and Wlnked
at Legislators were recipients of free
Ipasses and expensive gifts. which were
supposed to create a friendly atmoS-
phere when, later, measures were In
| troduced by the donors. Those days
have gone for good. The fact is that
political morality today is on a higher
level than at any time in our history.
| There are, of course, striking in
| stances of corruption in individual
public servants. but the wholesale ac-
cusation of present day public officials
as corrupt is simply silly"
why" l asked, lis it that more
people with high intellectual training
the kind that DR.. DIIrant sponsors
are not elected to office in America"
THE answer is" replied DR.. Bake
well, that people with high intellec-
tual training do get elected to office,
though it is not always the kind of
training given in the academic cloister.
The people have. in general, been wise
enough to recognize The able and fear
| less leader when they see him. and to
prefer him to either The loud -mouthed
demagogue, or the political quack doc
tor, or to the narrowly trained expert.
| Furthermore, our better men in public
life today are perpetual students of
government. Their training lasts not
for a few years in a graduate school,
! but for lifetime, and is, moreover,
| received from the vantage ground of
| actual contact with affairs and with
concrete problems of government"
DIR. Durant thinks that rotation
| in office is a besetting sin in our
political order. He thinks that gov
eminent is so complicated today that
only a man who stays in office for a
long time can acquire any useful
SKILL" I said
Rotation in office" said DR.. Bake
| well. was approved by Aristotle and
Lincoln as a necessary condition of
good government. Rotation does not
displace the competent legislator or
official. All it does is to weed out
the unfit in politics. We have plenty
of men who stay in public office for
quite long stretches"
Hope of Ending Corruption.
"Dr. Durant thinks that if we only
made our public officials pass a sci
entific training in government that
this would tend to insure the public
more against corruption in govern
ment than where we do not so train
| our candidates for office. He feels
that there is a higher code Of moral
| ity among scientists than among poll
ticians. What do you think Of that
| belief" 1 queried.
THE records of history are strewn
with examples Of men of keen and
highly trained intellect who We're
nevertheless notorious for their inn
morality both in public and private
life," said DIR. Blackwell. There is
nothing more preposterous than to
suppose that mere training of the in
tellect will insure sound moral char
acter. Some of the most immoral
men have been the best educated.
Caesar Borgia was no exceptional
case. Every ones experience teaches
that the educated man Is not by
virtue of his education more moral
than one less highly educated. Char
acter is not an affair of the intellect
only, but of the heart. or, If you
prefer, the will. Just as a man may
| know all the rules of logic and yet
break them all In his own reasoning
so he may know all about all the
| theories of ethics and yet violate
| every ethical code in his own con-
| duct
mo. what we need today is not
special schools for politicians, nor any
new machinery of government, but
rather more loyalty. more devotion,
more willingness to serve on the part
Of the individual citizen. less apathy,
a better civic consciousness and a
| greater willingness to take part in
the political life of the Nation-to
do the many little and thankless, and
often discouraging tasks that must be
done at the bottom, in the small
| group, in ones own community, in
caucuses and primaries, for what
| comes out at the top is determined
by what we have put in at the
bottom"
L -