A Combined General Staff
The article which Sir Edward Grigg contributed to The Times last Saturday, and the Lords' debate on the subject on Wednesday, have directed attention to the urgent need for a unified strategy, for a central planning of the war in such a way as to use land, sea and air forces as if they were three arms of a single service. The general public has been deeply disturbed by constant repetitions of the same mistake—failure to make adequate provision of air support for land and sea operations— and when the same mistake is made often it is reasonable to assume a defect in planning. Sir Edward Grigg is convinced that a committee in which the Chiefs of Staff sit together is not enough ; each is likely to have his own preoccupations, and to approach problems from a single-service point of view. He urges the case for appointing a non-Ministerial Chief to preside over the com- bined General Staff, his task being to envisage the use of the three services according to requirements in all operational plans, to take full account of production capacity, and submit plans to the War Cabinet. At present there is always the danger that strategists should be thinking along three different lines, or, as Lord Hankey puts it, that the Chiefs of Staff should rend to "stitch together" the plans of each fighting service instead of focussing all in a single war plan. He recalls Mr. Lloyd George's saying: "Stitching is not strategy." We ought to have a thinking depart- ment which is free from political responsibilities on the one hand, and on the other not tied up with any single-service point of view. What is needed is one man with a forceful mind and a broad knowledge of modern war who will ensure that all the problems of the war are faced as a single whole, subject, of course, to the ultimate decision of the War Cabinet.
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