MR. CHAIRMAN!
Bowie, Beverley M.
Mr. Chairman By BEVERLEY M. BOWIE A WISE and punch-drunk neighbor of mine who has seen his wife only two nights in the past month and who has taken to eating agendas for breakfast has finally...
...Then we can have at least one night of the year on which no minutes are being taken and everybody can get looping without a thought for Buildings & Grounds or even Public Relations...
...It is clear, then, that a solution— if one exists—must be a national solution, embracing both city and country...
...The Short Form is the easiest to master and is in many respects the most effective, since it provides no handholds for counter-argument...
...They seem quite unaware that they have an undeniable legal right to resign...
...Every other day they BEVERLEY M. BOWIE, presently a free-lance writer, was wartime Acting Chief of the Central European Section of the Office of Strategic Services...
...Chairman By BEVERLEY M. BOWIE A WISE and punch-drunk neighbor of mine who has seen his wife only two nights in the past month and who has taken to eating agendas for breakfast has finally served notice upon his community as follows: henceforth he will join any new committee to End The Elm Blight or to Boycott Bulgaria, but for every committee he joins, he will resign from two others...
...Or, better still, why not drop around to one of our regular meetings and get acquainted with the fellows...
...May I submit your name to our Standing Committee on Nominations...
...It calls for a broad solution—the kind of solution I have already sketched above...
...but the trouble lies not so much in any lack of variety as in the hesitancy of board-members to make use of even the simpler formulae...
...Some committees will be reformed at once...
...discover a new kind of hay fever to cure...
...And, as luck would have it, I happen to have a solution right here with me...
...I know that the young folks will scoff and snicker behind their hands...
...Naturally, as word got around, the trickle of emigrants swelled to a stream, the stream to a tide...
...Regretfully, John A. Doe It will be observed that the "Regretfully" lays Doe open to the obvious query: "Why...
...I wouldn't make such a statement if I couldn't prove it...
...He will no longer ask his children for a motion to adjourn from the dinner-table, nor refer the train conductor to the Section on Budget and Finance...
...I have no wish to strain your credulity...
...The Elegant Form is a good deal trickier to handle and is definitely not recommended for those unprepared to deal with the rebuttals it invites...
...there are old wives extant today whose fathers and mothers passed their whole lives without once raising their right hands to signify "Aye...
...Others will be reconstituted by March or April, when it becomes obvious again that the Income Tax Must Be Repealed, and that funds will have to be raised somehow to re-shingle the tennis-club roof, which is a disgrace...
...Concerted action...
...Everybody starts the New Year in the clear...
...What we need especially is to remember that there was an era when there were no committees...
...and, what is more, no one will bring us up...
...The complete capitulation of the Country was signified when the first landowner auctioned off his remodeled barn, drove by devious routes back to an apartment-loft in the Bowery, put a false name above his mail-box, ripped out the phone, got a job on the swing-shift, and arranged to spend his spare hours behind the Times at the Harvard Club...
...Your Obt Servt John A. Doe, Esq...
...It runs like this: Dear Sir (or Madam): I hereby tender my resignation, effective immediately...
...it was impossible to screen them all...
...What is it that you regret...
...A handy sample is appended: Dear Sir (or Madam): Long tenure on this and other Boards convinces me that the function of committees is to keep minutes and waste hours...
...One would think, after Whymple v. Leavenworth Alumni, the Court's position on this would be clear...
...All we need is a little vision, a little grit...
...Had we but world enough and time, this chatter...
...Committees to Abolish Representative Government, and other Committees to Abolish Representative Rankin, are sure to crop up in the dog-days, and it is hard to discourage them...
...Nevertheless, thousands of browbeaten citizens continue in peonage to their committees out of sheer ignorance of their constitutional safeguards...
...Chairman, were no crime...
...Every day our scientists discover a new cure for hay fever...
...People said the same sort of thing, however, about Galileo, about Steve Brodie, about Rutherford B. Hayes...
...John A. Doe There is something to be said for signing this form simply "A Member" or, at most, "Member of House Committee...
...Its appeal consists largely in the latitude it permits the expression of reason, rancor, or both...
...As a stop-gap for the nonce, however, until this annual moratorium can be established, I am willing to circulate a few forms for individual action which may prove useful to those sufficiently strong-willed...
...This means action...
...But we shall all of us, soon enough be "Old Business...
...He is the author of a novel, "Operation Bughouse," an hilarious satire on intelligence activities in the Balkans dur-ing the period of World War II, and of a number of magazine articles and book reviews...
...Accordingly, while yet there is warmth in this body, I am withdrawing it to more diverting employment...
...I know that you, as a responsible member of your community, will want to serve on our newly-organized Committee To Apply The Chinese New Year To Committees (CTATCNYTC...
...They will claim it is just an old wives' tale...
...That is the inspiring thing, the thing that renews one's faith in the limitless possibilities of Man...
...Infiltration started, as it always does, under cover of such "front" organizations as the garden clubs and art juries...
...Strict compliance with this principle, he hopes, will soon make a sane man of him...
...It is quite possible, of course, that my friend has set his sights too high, that he will not find it so easy to extricate himself from the System...
...It shows what can be done...
...But at worst we shall have given everybody a fair chance to get lost...
...It was the city which offered little or no escape from the ubiquitous committee, whereas the country was known as the Unorganized Territory...
...The situation is intolerable...
...If you gentlemen will draw a little closer, and remember to raise your hands if you need to be excused . . . now: we all recall, don't we, the meaning of Chinese New Year...
...There are, of course, other possible forms (the Sardonic, the Byzantine, the Mendacious, etc...
...His relatives, who long ago shifted all their funds to their wives' names, and then sent their wives abroad, will lose some of their fear of being touched for Hot Lunches for Homeless Hapsburgs and may even speak to him again...
...And he may be hard put to it to find an answer...
...that's the theory...
...but I have done a good deal of research into the history of this period, and I can assure you that it is a sober, documented fact: refugees from urban areas used to be able to buy houses in the country, quite openly, live in them, raise families, answer the telephone, receive callers, go out to dinner, and, apart from a yearly bid to the Firemen's Supper, never once get hooked for a Generous Contribution or a Subcommittee...
...and at best we may have killed off hundreds of committees which have fulfilled their purpose but not realized it, or which have never discovered what their purpose was...
...But it was not long before one could see the telltale little knots of cars before some active lady's house, or the sinister spectacle of a job printer warming up his presses for a rush-order "appeal...
...This will make the Chairman somewhat uncertain as to who is resigning, and thus render it more difficult for him to persuade you to reconsider your action...
...I don't say this is a complete solution...
...and, inevitably, some carriers of Roberts' Parliamentary Disease got loose in the counties...
...Well, anyway, it seems that on New Year's in China all debts have to be paid up, cancelled, wiped off the books...
...My solution is to have the life of every commitee in our fair land terminate each year on the stroke of midnight, Dec...
...In those days, admittedly, things were pretty topsy-turvy...
...Yet they won through in the end...
...We have one of the better rooms at Bellevue...
...Markedly more gracious, the Long Form nevertheless begs an embarrassing question and opens up a rather unfortunate gambit: Dear Sir (or Madam): I hereby tender my resignation, effective immediately...
...Well, let me say this to them, and I can back it up with signed testimonials...
Vol. 15 • February 1951 • No. 2
