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They drove me mad with their red-tape nonsense. It will take some time, they say, to get a mortgage on it, and meanwhile they don't seem inclined to advance me anything, or a hundred or two, perhaps. What's that? I lost my temper, and next time I go they'll turn me out, I dare say. But there's the truth. It's money I want, and if you can't help me to money it's no use talking."
The Moors have a small opinion of England, France, and America, and put their representatives to a deal of red-tape circumlocution before they grant them their common rights, let alone a favor. But the moment the Spanish minister makes a demand, it is acceded to at once, whether it be just or not.
And as the piebald ponies and the state coach were necessary for the prestige of the Government and for proof that the King and his ministers were working amicably together, therefore the red-tape worms were all wriggling their level best under pressure from above, and in the small hours every morning millions of public money were being voted into the hands of the Government by an obedient majority of sleepy legislators, bound by party loyalty neither to criticise nor to control.
Quartermaster Department, Ordnance Department, Signal Corps, and the other bureaus were uncoördinated, and inevitable waste and inefficiency followed all their operations. It was the crisis that arose from the problem of supplies, in the winter of 1917, that furnished the President with the opportunity to cut red-tape and secure the centralization he desired.
Still in the best of humours, with eyes turned towards the lighter, ever lighter square in the wall, I amused myself acting Cabinet Minister; called myself Von Tangen, and clothed my speech in a dress of red-tape. My fancies had not ceased, but I was far less nervous. If I only had not been thoughtless enough to leave my pocket-book at home!
sang, or rather shouted, a little Corporal, whom we have met before in these pages, as he made ridiculous efforts to infuse life into heels clodded with mud. "Talk as you please about old Pigey, boys, he's a regular trump on the whiskey question. He'll cut red-tape any day on that.
In such a case a man afraid of responsibility always acts rigidly by the regulations and communicates with the Department at home to get authority for everything he does; and therefore he usually accomplishes nothing whatever, but is able to satisfy all individuals with red-tape minds by triumphantly pointing out his compliance with the regulations.
Pynsent why he should like to be there so much. He is not a clever man " "He certainly is not a genius, Pynsent," said Pen. "Lady Diana says that he attends Committees all day; that then again he is at the House all night; that he always votes as he is told; that he never speaks; that he will never get on beyond a subordinate place; and as his grandmother tells him, he is choked with red-tape.
"Well," rejoined the Private, "I have endeavored to book myself up, as far as my advantages would allow, in our army movements; and the nearest approach to anything like an anaconda, that I can see or hear of, is that infernal Red-tape worm that is strangling the soul out of the army.
Instead, the center of the stage was again occupied by the old red-tape activities, by discussions about the Jewish question endless no less than fruitless in the recesses of bureaucratic committees and sub-committees, by oracular animadversions of governors and governors-general upon the conduct of the Jews, and so on. Theory-mongering of the reactionary variety was again at a premium.
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