My Chairman, Mr H. H. Dickinson, was honoured to be offered the role of keynote speaker for the 1974 Annual Conference of the Royal Institute of Public Administration. He had proceeded a considerable distance along the road of preparing his address when he was unexpectedly called on to visit Canada on government business. On his behalf I wish to apologize to the organizers for his absence today. He regrets it very much. The address I am about to give is in some sense therefore a joint effort, encapsulating the theme judged by Mr Dickinson to be most appropriate for this occasion, within a framework which enables me to develop and expound that theme.