Remarks to the Civil Service Assembly of the United States and Canada.

Mr. Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen:

I am indeed pleased to know that my predecessor, Theodore Roosevelt, was able to greet you at your birth. It is my privilege to come, fifty years later, to congratulate you on reaching so successfully and in such good health and strength your half-century mark. And it is a privilege to do so.

I am not going to talk about all the statistics that have been piled on my desk in the last few days about our Civil Service-about the things we have tried to do--about the developments through which it has gone--the programs we have recently put into effect for its betterment, things that are still on the docket. You know most of these very well indeed.

I would like to talk for just a moment about some of the meanings of the Civil Service as I see it.

Any free government certainly needs a vast corps of well-trained, dedicated, intelligent, long-service people who can take care of all the intricate jobs of operating the many and manifold activities that governments these days are compelled to carry on.

Unless we have proper policies for attracting into that service the kind of people that are needed, programs to give them the opportunity to satisfy human longings for advancement and for recognition and the certainty that their old age will be taken care of in such a way that they will always live respectable and rewarding lives--then we can't expect to have such an organization.

Through them--through these permanent organisms--we have coordination, we have continuity, not so much in so-called political policy but in programs of procedure and the purposes in government that are absolutely necessary. I venture to think they have a similar opportunity in developing better knowledge and feeling between sister republics, such as we have represented in this organism between Canada and America. It is just as important that each government knows how the other operates in its procedural intricacies as it is to know that the man at the top may be a Liberal or a Conservative, a Democrat or a Republican.

I am sure that the history of this organization will show that much good has developed and accrued to both of our countries because of the kind of association you have.

The final point I wanted to speak about was this: We cannot have the kind of an organization--Civil Service organization--in any government--any free government--if we deliberately involve it in the political quarrels of partisan organizations.

The Civil Service must be protected from it. And this is one reason why it is so necessary that the so-called political appointments be clearly defined, segregated and separated from the career service of which I speak.

There are some positions that because of their character in policy-making have a great function in carrying out the policies, let us say, on which a particular party was elected to carry on the government for four years. Those positions properly must not be Civil Service, because if they are, the Civil Service is both involved in politics and its top people promoted to those jobs become in jeopardy because of the accidents of politics. I believe that that division must be insisted upon by the Civil Service. Never let anybody call you political regardless of the intensity of your political feelings in favor of any one party or in favor of any one personality.

You are an organism that serves your country, America and Canada, and it must never be said that you serve Republicans or Democrats or similar parties in any other country.

Our own Civil Service, happily, has a very fine reputation in this regard. But it is one that politicians of any party will violate either unknowingly or in the hope of getting some quick and partisan advantage at times.

You yourselves must be the guardians of that rule, the supporters of that rule, even more than the people who are seeking at times to exploit you or your organization.

Now, my acquaintanceship--my association with my friendship for--Civil Service is of long standing. I first came for, it seems to me, more or less permanent duty in Washington in 1926--before some of you were born. In all that time I have been intimately associated with members of the Civil Service. All my life I have been associated with people in the military service. And I think I can say this: Nowhere in the world have I met more efficiency, more dedication, more readiness to put in hours without counting them on the clock--indeed, when they were required to report overtime, trying to find ways they can get out of it--than I have among the Civil Service.

My experience with them is one to inspire anyone, to uplift the heart. And I think that my last word before I go, is to ask you people, through all of the Civil Services that you know-well, I haven't had much experience, of course, with local Civil Services--to extend to them my congratulations on the way they have served their country through all their years. I am sure this same observation could be applied to every City, State and County Civil Service in the nation.

I think you are doing a grand work for your country, for the people you represent, by meeting as you do here today, to exchange ideas, to carry back greater faith in this wonderful organization, the Civil Services of our countries.

Thank you very much indeed.