Recruitment in the Colonial Services

Abstract

ASHORT time ago a Committee was appointed, under the chairmanship of Sir Warren Fisher, to report on the “System of Appointment in the Colonial Office and the Colonial Services”; its report, which has been recently issued, merits careful consideration. In an opening section attention is directed to the extraordinary diversity of the territories administered by the Colonial Office, covering an area of two million square miles, practically all within the tropics, with a population of nearly fifty millions. Although often alluded to as the ‘Colonial Service’, in effect there is no such thing, as the Colonial Secretary has to deal with the affairs of more than fifty distinct governments, ruling territories in size from as large as Central Europe down to remote island groups; conditions of life, material equipment, and economic factors being entirely dissimilar.