Changing Concepts of Public Service

WILLIAM O. FARBER*
On the eastern side of the South Dakota Badlands there is a
geologic feature labeled appropriately " T h e Door." From this entrance, carved long ago by nature's persistent forces, the traveler
follows a trail winding past high pagoda-like columns into a maze of
oddly shaped rock piles. And if one has the good fortune to take the
excursion in early morning or late evening, when the shadows are
longest, the effect is startling and enchanting, substantiating again and
again, Frank Lloyd Wright's observation that the Dakota Badlands
"have more spiritual quality to impart to the mind of America than
anything else in it made by man's God."
From " T h e Door," to guide and safeguard the traveler, yellow
stakes have been driven at regular intervals so that the traveler may
retrace his journey without fear of being lost. And, if one views the
stakes from " T h e Door" at the start of his journey, they fade into a
hazy obscurity and one wonders where the way really goes and what
eventually it is like.
Just so, tonight, I propose to discuss with you the direction which
our public service is taking and appears to be going, and I hope, with
some careful focusing and delineation, to point out, as with the aid of a
telephoto lens, the difficulties that lie ahead and what needs to be done
if our public servants, our formal leaders upon whom our future
depends, are to meet the ills and challenges of present as well as yet
unopened Pandoran boxes. In short, I propose to present a descriptive
analysis of the public service as it is now evolving, and to stress the
obligation of the academic world in that development and in the
training of responsible leaders.

The public service as I consider it here consists of all those persons

engaged in the work of our national, state, and local governments and
who are employed in government's many and varied activities and
functions. Thus defined, public service includes federal, state, and
local officials of all ranks and occupations,governors and judges,
mayors and policemen, cabinet members and postmen, school
teachers and meteorologists, generals and presidents, county highway
commissioners and social workers, city council members and
legislatorsall who, on the public pay roll, have a special obligation to
serve their country. In short I'm talking about those people whom
some describe as "those who couldn't find any other job, so they're
working for the government."
Now public employment is obviously essential to us, because of
the services renderedtraffic control, police protection, the construction of highways, the maintenance of public parks, and the like.
Significant as these functions are, I would like to suggest that a more
vital consequence of public service lies in the extent to which it will
enable us to survive in the battles we now face. The competitive
struggle with Russia and modified Soviet economic and social systems
is only part of this picture. The inability to organize the world to
provide employment, to educate it properly, to feed it, to clothe it, to
house it, to ease tensions creates far more urgent problems. The
importance of the public service lies, as I see it, in this urgency of
present world problems and the ability or inability of the United States
government through its public service to deal with them successfully.
On such an evening as this, one doesn't like to be pessimistic. But
I am reminded of the middle-aged lady who, after hearing a discussion
of the educational problem, exclaimed, " O h dear, the critical crisis in
education is so full of critical crises."
Unfortunately, the dear lady had pointed out the world situation
exactly. The critical crisis is full of critical crises. In many areas, the
world is sick. A battle is going on that is full of many battles.
Let us take stock of the present by considering briefly certain
events that have occurred in the past thirty years. I'm referring to
obvious things. There is an old Korean saying, ' 'His view of the world
is the view of a frog at the bottom of the well.'' Not only do we often
have too limited a view restricted by the sides of the well, but only too
often we want to close our eyes to the obvious.
The urgency of the present can be shown by reference to three
significant recent events: the depression of the thirties, World War II,

and the massacres of the Jews in Germany from 1935 to 1941. These
tragic events are close enough at hand so that for many of us, only
some brief reflection is needed to recall them as sad, to-be-forgotten
memories.
I do not like to remember 1933, with its hunger and breadlines,
its WPA and NY A, when all the banks were closed and many a person
existed only on what he had in his pocket. Somehow, in looking back,
it seems impossible that the depression could have happened to a
country as wealthy as the United States. With great resources,
tremendous productive capacity, and people desiring and needing
work, we were as a nation ill-clothed, ill-fed, and ill-housed. Nor do I
like to recall the time, when responding to a greeting from Uncle Sam,
I found myself picking up cigarette butts in a hot barracks area in
Texas, and, along with millions then and thousands since, almost
completely bereft of civil rights, at the mercy of the caprice of a Pfc.
But most of all, I do not like to review the tragedy of Germany
under Hitler, where over six million members of a minority race were
put to death by various methodstragic not alone because of when it
took place, but because of where it took placein a country known for
its religion, its education, its culture. In 1955,1 was privileged to be in
a small group that asked Arnold Toynbee in London how he accounted for this strange antithesis of civilized conduct. Toynbee
responded, ' 'We should never forget: Civilization is at best only a thin
veneer, and underneath the man is the brute. It takes very little to
remove the veneer."
There is no need to elaborate further. The inadequacy of human
endeavor when called upon to meet the monumental problems of today
is only too clearly evident. As one surveys the exploding population
bomb, the arms race, and the pathetic inability to cope with Berlin,
Quemoy, and Panmunjom, one can find much to worry about.
An Italian journalist took me to visit the Roman Forum. It was
about eleven o'clock at night, and as one might anticipate, a moon had
risen. It was one of those times when one could set his fancies free and
one could almost see bold Caesar on the steps of stone across from the
temple of the Vestal Virgins and imagine Roman citizens thronging
through the narrow ways between the maze of buildings. Here was
tangible evidence of what had been the capital of the world, but now
was capital no longer. Nations rise and fall; they differ only as to rate.
Clearly there is no reason to believe that the United States can
occupy its position of pre-eminence forever. There are signs the eclipse

has already begun. A word like "co-existence" is a symbol of the

distasteful reality.
President Eisenhower has observed, "For the first time in
history, we have the power to end history." We are challenged not
only by the other nations; we are challenged by the weapons we have
developed. Certainly, there is little cause at the moment to be comfortable. The time will come again that will try men's souls. It is in the
light of this urgency of the present and the future, when our society,
our civilization is in the balance, that this examination of public service
is made.
This is not the place to review in detail the development of the
American public service. Much of this history has not been a proud
one. The prestige of government service has been low. Mothers could
say, ' T didn't raise my boy to be on the public pay roll." The concept
of His Majesty's Service has not become The President's Serviceand
if it had, I doubt if there would be any great struggle for more people to
enter it.
Today we find some two million persons in national employ and
many more, if we include our educational system, in state employ.
The numerical rise of civil service employees as well as those in
military service has been one of the significant developments of
twentieth-century America. For the most part, despite the partial
truths of The Ugly American, we can be proud of our individual public
servants today. I confess, I had not quite realized how proud we should
be until I examined the role of Institutes of Public Administration in
the Far East. With some exceptions, government in the Far East is
carried on as much under as over the table. At least our problem seems
to center around electric refrigerators, rugs, and mink coats.
But if the individual servant seems properly the object of some
admiration, the appropriate yardstick, I feel, is not what he does, but
what needs to be done. In short, in the light of the urgent present, the
public servant needs to be something more than he has been, if the
challenges of the present are to be met. The individual competence
generally prevalent must be so organized as to minimize the collective
incompetence too frequently prevailing.
Looking at our public service, certain characteristics seem clear
its increase in size, the growth of field as well as central government
service, its developing career aspects, its emphasis on the merit
principle and political neutrality as goals. But there are new aspects
and needs of the American public service which are apt to be

overlooked and which are emerging. It is these I now wish to call to

your attention.
First of all, public service has tended to become international.
This has occurred in three different ways: first, an actual international
public service has come into existence and flourished with the
establishment of the League of Nations. This service is far more extensive than most people realize.
Secondly, those parts of our own national civil service dealing in
international problems have become immeasurably more sizeable and
important. In addition to the regular work of the State Department and
other departments of the government, commerce and agriculture, for
examples, which have important international functions, such
specialized agencies as USIS and ICA are tremendously influential.
Indeed the whole technical assistance program is becoming increasingly regarded as one of the great hopes of the world.
Toynbee has said that the historian of the future looking back on
this period might characterize this century not as a period when the
methods of transportation made great advances, not as a time when the
ravages of disease were greatly reduced, not as an era when the atom
was split, but as the age when man first dared to think that the benefits
of civilization might be distributed to all mankind. In line with this
thinking, the American Point Four program was initiated, in the
words of the President, as "a bold new program for making the
benefits of our scientific advances and industrial progress available for
the improvement and growth of under-developed areas."
The influx of foreign travelers to the United States and their
contact with officialdom is important, but an even greater significance
is our own treatment of minority groups. I shall never forget the Bank
of Korea clerk who was my guide to Kyongju, the Athens of Korea.
We had had a wonderful excursion with temple exploration and verbal
give and take. He had observed that this was his first opportunity to
become really acquainted with an American and he liked the equality
of it. ' 'But,'' he said over the cups, ' 'what about Little Rock?"
Even in remote Kyongju, wherever you may go, the question
remains, "But what about Little Rock?"
Or, to give another example, a young Korean major in the ROK
army invited me to attend the great Yung Nak Presbyterian church in
Seoul. It proved to be a thrilling experience. Over 1,500 Koreans were
in the audience, and the old hymns were sung with an enthusiasm rare
with us these days. After the service, in a Chinese tearoom, as we

exchanged confidences, expressing some sort of Christian

brotherhood, Major Lee quite unexpectedly said, "I've heard the
Presbyterians in the north part of the United States quarrel with those
in the south. Is it true they are divided? If so, why?"
"If so, why?" Yes. "Why?" Our domestic difficulties have a
way of boomeranging all the way back to us after spreading doubts
around the entire world.
The point remains, our attitude, as expressed in law toward our
foreign students, toward each other, toward foreign policy, all affect
international goals and aspirations. Our public servants administering
that law thus become international even though their duties seem
ostensibly domestic.
I'm well aware that some students of administration would say
that the first duty of a public official is to carry out orders, and that he
cannot be solicitous of remote effects, when trivial, on international
relations. Thus, a leading student of public administration has observed: "If an administrator, each time he is faced with a decision,
must perforce evaluate that decision in terms of the whole range of
human values, rationality in administration is impossible."1 What I
am thinking about is not so much the actual decision as the manner of
making it. Thus Koreans have asked, "Why don't university
department heads in the United States answer letters of inquiry?"
Such minute matters have a way of causing impact far beyond their
original significance. My first observation then is that from top to
bottom the public service has come to have international aspects, and
public servants must be trained accordingly.
The second observation is that the modern public servant needs to
be a humanitarian; he must be tolerant and possess a sympathetic
understanding of the culture of other lands. He must have what
Harlow Shapley has called "reverence for humility." The conclusion
is commonplace that the transition from nineteenth-century government was a shift from the police and defense functions to welfare activities. Thus, government, perhaps of necessity as the power of the
voter has grown, has become concerned with people and what becomes
of them.
Our approach to this in the world setting is cogently stated in
President Truman's 1949 inaugural address:

More than half the people of the world are living in conditions
approaching misery. Their food is inadequate. They are victims of
disease. Their economic life is primitive and stagnant. Their poverty
is a handicap and a threat both to them and to more prosperous areas.
For the first time in history, humanity possesses the knowledge and
the skill to relieve the suffering of these people . . .
This humanitarian approach does not mean ignoring the law in
bestowing governmental largess; it does not mean the winking at legal
violations, but it does mean the exercise of administrative discretion
where discretion exists to the benefit of mankind, and in a manner
designed to promote human dignity. Institutions may be governed in
theory and law by regulations designed to insure fairness, hearing, and
equal and sympathetic treatment. In practice, as institutions must
operate through men, the results may be quite different.
I think here of one of the most thought-provoking comments I
have ever heard. In the course of investigating the off-reservation
Indian problem, the three of us who constituted the research team
interviewed an Indian woman, well known for her welfare work. We
asked her why the Indian spent so much time in bars, drinking. She
hesitated, and then said: "There is more Christianity in the bar than
in the church. If the Indian attends church, no one will sit near him,
no one will speak to him, no one will shake his hand. In a bar this is not
true; bars are friendly."
Thus, just as the rules of the church prescribe friendliness, unless
the heart be in it, there is no friendliness; so, too, government can
require equality of treatment, but unless the public servant feels that
equality none will exist. The power to tear down is a terrible power.
No one has as much opportunity as the teacher to use it. As the scope
of government has grown, as discretionary authority has become
enlarged, so too the potential humanitarian character of both
government and the public servant has increased immeasurably.
Let there be no mistaken notion about the extent of discretion in
administration these days. Naive is the student who accepts the
professor's answer, "I am sorry I cannot give you an ' A ' "; or the
professor who accepts the department head's statement, "You have
not taught long enough to be recommended for promotion"; or the
department head who accepts the dean's statement, "Sorry, there is
no money left in the budget''; or the dean who accepts the president's
statement, ' 'No more out-of-state travel will be permitted this year'';
or the president who accepts the governor's statement, " N o new

building will be recommended by m e . " To be compelled to accept a

negative is simply an indication, for the most part, that one's political
resources are insufficient for the occasion.
The third characteristic of public service is its multilateral nature.
There was a time when we in political science exhibited a certain
possessiveness when it came to civil service positions. Government and
political science were synonymous, and government employment was
political science employment.
Professionalization and the rise of technological education laid this
pretense to rest. While certain organizational, financial, and personnel
problems of civil service were still the primary concern of students of
government, the greater problems became those of professional objectives and training. It was, for example, how the health, the highway, and the educational programs attained their goals that counted.
We have reached a stage in this development, when governmental
positions in addition to being multifarious are multilateral. To be the
specialist is not enough. The specialist must know something of
language and culture, history and government, science and literature,
and above all, he must possess the spirit of humanity, a kindly
tolerance and humility, a realization that this is a human being's
world.
All through the public service today one does find to an increasing
degree the dedicated doctor, nurse, nutritionist, educator, social
worker, economist, meteorologist, engineer, astronomer, aware of
this larger role as leader he is called upon to play. I think, for example,
of the large number of public servants taking foreign language courses.
Therefore, keeping pace with specialization has been the need for
the specialist to be mindful of his international and humanitarian
obligations, the multilateral or generalist aspects of his work.
One final characteristic of the new public service must be considered. The developments previously noted have occurred at a time
when the demands that the public service produce are greater than ever
before. The pragmatic test"What does it d o ? " is supplying the
answer to much of the world as to which camp a people wishes to be a
part. Can the United States outproduce Russia? Are the people of the
United States happier? More moral? More content? "By their fruits
ye shall know them" becomes a yardstick that Americans may
properly apprehend and a new satellite around the sun becomes a
symbol that has significance far beyond its scientific import.

From the viewpoint of the public servant, the challenge arises in

how to do what policy declares should be done in spite of restrictive
rules. Time and again the public servantwhether postal clerk,
mayor, county commissioner, state geologist, attorney general, or
presidentis faced with the frustration of dubious legal sanction.
The easy way out is to treat doubtful legal potence as the excuse to
fail to act. This is exactly what the good administrator should not do
"There are no hopeless situations; there are only people hopeless
about them." In the public service, no less than in other activities,
creativity has an important role to play.
Hence, as the final characteristic of the new public service, I
would suggest creativity, meaning inventiveness or resourcefulness.
The importance of this trait has received increasing attention. Dr. F. S.
C. Northrop of Yale University has noted that Socrates regarded the
philosopher as a thorn in the flesh, and he observed that nobody is a
creative thinker unless continuously he has a thorn in the flesh, that is,
unless he is disturbed by something.
It has been my experience that public servants have many thorns
in the flesh and many, especially those engaged in field work, do
something about them, both inside and outside the rules and the
regulations. This resultant action is the essence of creativity. In an
account of Dr. Arthur H. Compton's analysis of conditions under
which scientists are creative, it is pointed out that he found that each
scientist has become conscious of his own "thorn in the flesh."
Further, with reference to our own Ernest Lawrence, Compton observed that Lawrence had more initiative than almost anyone else that
he knew, a tremendous energy and a determination to get things done
as he wanted them. Compton concluded with this comment: "Here
then are the things that I see as I review this group of typical cases.
First of all, to my mind, the thing which is the essence of creativity is
the decision to do somthing about it when you are irritated. I would
agree that irritation is the first step, but the decision to do something
about it is the essence of creativity." 2
Now in my own governmental experiences in the Office of Price
Administration, both in the field and in Washington, D.C., on the
regional loyalty board, with the state legislature, and my contacts with
foreign aid agencies, have impressed me not only with the opportunity

and the need of public servants to exercise inventiveness, but with the
extent to which they actually use it.
Illustrations leap up, but the words cannot be put down, for to do
so would be to betray illegal albeit humanitarian acts. The tragedy is,
especially for our foreign service, that greater discretion has not been
officially bestowed upon our public servants. It takes but little
imagination to see that what has been called inventiveness is only an
aspect, a neglected aspect, of what we more familiarly think of as
leadership.
So much for the character of our present and incipient modern
public servant who thus emerges as now needing to have international,
humanitarian, generalist, and inventive or leadership traits. This is
what we are getting in the way of a public servant, though in an
inadequate way; this is what we need, to a much greater degree.
This leads me to the final group of observations.
I have tried to stress the urgency of contemporary social problems
and the present character of the public service. I should like now to
show the relationship of the new public service and the University
community.
Emerson in his famous Phi Beta Kappa address, " T h e American
Scholar," said: "Books are the best of things, well used; abused,
among the worst. What is the right use? What is the one end which all
means go to effect? They are for nothing but to inspire. I had better
never see a book than to be warped by its attraction clean out of my
own orbit, and made a satellite instead of a system. The one thing in a
world, of value, is the active soul."
The urgency of world problems and the type of public servant
required to meet these problems make the development of "active
souls" imperative. The need is great for men and women whose vision
ignores the confines of intellectual disciplines, the harness of the
classroom assignment, and the goose-step of fifty-minute periods. We
should recruit men of the type of Ulysses, described in the Odyssey as:
"Many cities did he visit, and many were the nations with whose
manners and customs he was acquainted." But the beneficial consequences of mere travel, unaccompanied by knowledge and appreciation of history, language, and culture, and the habit of thinking
realistically mean little. Max Weber in his essay on "Politics as a
Vocation," in noting that the age of an individual is not significant,
stated: "What is decisive is the trained relentlessness in viewing the
realities of life and the ability to face such reality and to measure up to

them inwardly." Thus we must cease praising those who build houses
by the side of the road to be a friend of man, and encourage the man
who is out in the road fighting society's battle.
The function of higher education in times such as these is
somehow to provide the meeting ground of theory and realities to train
the public servant broadly and generally, but preserve the relentless
instinct to grapple with specific situations. The ivory tower comes into
its own as a tower in times such as these.
Comfort without vision is no match for the four horsemen riding
in from beyond the hills. . . . Immunity without responsibility,
vision without action, means eventual suicide. Human necessity, if
no nobler motive, cries out for restoration of the tower, not as a
monument to academic irrelevance, but as an indispensable vantage
point of vision without which we perish as men. Though no bread
may be baked in the tower, no baker is free to bake bread with integrity and peace without the trustworthiness of the tower's primary
work and wisdom.3
I would hope that educators, regarding the ivory tower as part of
the battlefield in considering their responsibility to provide public
servants, would not lose sight of the need to produce well rounded
public servants with an international, humanitarian, multilateral, and
inventive orientation. This does not mean extroverts only are needed.
Indeed, as Woodrow Wilson noted in his Leaders of Men, "a book is
often quite as quickening a trumpet as any made of brass and sounded
on the field." But it does mean that more and more in urgent times
such as these, the stars and mud must be combined. Woodrow Wilson
in the work just cited illustrated this point well:
The captain of a Mississippi steamboat had made fast to the
shore because of a thick fog lying on the river. The fog lay low and
dense upon the surface of the water, but overhead all was clear. A
cloudless sky showed a thousand points of starry light. An impatient
passenger inquired the cause of the delay. ' 'We cannot see to steer,''
said the captain. "But all's clear over head," suggested the
passenger. "You can see the North Star." "Yes," reflected the

officer. "But we are not going that way." Politics must follow the
actual windings of the channel of the river if it steer by the stars.4
I have attempted to present the changing nature of public service
in the light of the urgency of present world problems and the place of
the universities in these developments. The absorption of these
concepts into our way of thinking of the public service as thus
described would, I think, do much to improve the position of the
United States internationally.
I remind you that we have been thinking of the public service
broadly as including president, governors, mayors, congressmen,
legislators, councilmen, and all federal, state, and local employees,
including civil servants, university professors, and school teachers
among others. Unless we look on the public servant as partaking and
needing to partake to a greater or lesser degree of the developing traits
described, we will give the public servant, as a leader, less than his
due, at a time when we can ill afford to detract from the dignity and
dedication which should belong to him.
It takes but little imagination to appreciate that my "changing
concepts" are really new demands on the public servant in his role as
leaderthat he be international, humanitarian, generalist, and inventive. And it takes but little more imagination to realize that these
are demands which are actually confronting all of us whether public
servant or not, if we are to carry the burden of our mission on earth.
The peoples of the world are observing critically how locally we
meet such problems as education, housing, reorganization of
government, civil liberties and segregation. If we are concerned about
the international situation and sometimes feel that Washington is
incompetent, we should not forget that our own failures in meeting
local issues have an impact far beyond our national boundaries.
Measured against our great natural resources, how adequately do
we provide higher education for poor but superior students? How
successful have our slum clearance projects been? How satisfactory
have been our attempts to safeguard personal liberty and promote
human dienitv?

All American citizens, as well as local and national officials, thus

have an important international role to play. The choice between the
American and Russian systems will be made by many undecided
peoples on the basis of which system, in their opinion, is better able to
demonstrate its ability to attain desired human and economic goals.
The continuous succession of international crises during the past
thirty years emphasizes the urgent need to examine the demands made
on our public servants and determine how these demands can best be
met. Unless public servants are broadly trained and are recruited for
their tolerance, resourcefulness, and understanding of international
problems, we can lose to Russia in a race more important than
launching satellites into space.
As we return to " T h e Door"the start of our venturethis
final thought: If we continue to think of our own careers, as well as
those of public servants, as wholly local, specialized, narrow, and
mechanistic, the result will be, I think, disastrous. We need to
recognize what the human venture is becoming and needs to become,
and to train accordingly. We need to appreciate the discretion that is
ours, that we all partake of the mission of leadership. As public power,
as government continues to grow, as the earth continues to shrink and
we must live closer together, these changing concepts, needing and
demanding acceptance and appreciation, afford a way to a better and
happier world.