The Political Bureaucracy of France Since the War

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.