THE WAR OFFICE AND PARLIAMENT. T HE eighth Report of the
Select Committee on National Expenditure raises issues which are even more important than the purely financial problems with which this Committee has already dealt so ably. For this Report brings to light what is in effect an open defiance by the War Office of the authority of Parliament. The House of Commons in exercise of its primary and most important duty—namely, the protection of the public funds—appointed a Select Committee to inquire into the way in which the Departments were spending the money of the nation. Twice this Committee reported on the continuous large increases in the number of officers em- ployed at the War Office, and expressed the opinion that the size of the staff was in excess of the requirements of the work necessary to be done, The Committee recommended that "a systematic inquiry should be made from time to time bi a Committee, or some other suitable organization, to be established by the Secretary of State and acting under his direct authority." That was a perfectly proper course to take. The Select Committee of theY House of Commons did not attempt itself to undertake the work of inquiring in detail into the organization of the War Office ; it recognized that this was a task which must be entrusted to specialists. All it asked was that specialists should be appointed by the Secretary of State to do the necessary work under his autliority. No objection to this proposal was made by the Army Council. On the contrary, in January, 1918, the Army Council appointed a Committee of its own members for the required purpose, and they in turn appointed a Sub-Committee, over which Major-General Sir A. Money presided. This Committee further included a representative of the Finance Department of the War Office and a representative of the Secretary's Department. It was instructed to inquire into the staff of each Department of the War Office successively.
Up to this point the whole procedure was thoroughly satisfactory. Within a few weeks, however, General Money was taken from the work entrusted to him and given a com- mand abroad. This of course may have been mere accident He was succeeded by Lieutenant-General Sir T. D'O. Snow, and he too was very quickly appointed to some other post. That was in April. Since then the work of the Committee has been entirely discontinued. These facts alone are sufficient to create suspicion as to the general attitude of the War Office. Further facts are even more significant. During the short period that the Committee appointed by the Army Council was in being, it had while under the presidency of General Money spent eleven days examining in detail the work of the individual officers of the Adjutant-General's Department ; under the . presidency of General Snow the Committee had investigated the Department of the Military Secretary and made some small suggestions. The Committee reported to the Army Council in March and April, but the Reports were not passed on to the Select Committee of the House of Commons until the end of July. Thus not only did the Army Council put an end to the inquiry which it had itself set on foot, but for three months it held back the information which its own Committee had collected. The nature of that information explains the action of the Army Council. General Money's Report on the organization of the Adjutant-General's Department showed conclusively that this Department was badly organized. The Report states, for example, that while one section of the Adjutant-General's Department was engaged in the compilation of statistics for the whole Department, in other directorates of that Department other officers were engaged in working out similar statistics for their own sub- divisions. This, it may be remarked in passing, is typical of almost every one of our Government Departments. There is nothing that the Government official so much loves as working out statistics. It is an easy job, involving little thought, and can be continued indefinitely.
General Money's Committee also found that in a number of cases Staff Captains were doing work which could easily be performed, and in similar cases was actually being per- formed in the War Office, by women. It also found a general impression that an attached officer costs little or nothing, and that therefore no particular limit need be kept on the numbers employed." A plausible defence for this view can be made on the ground that officers returning on leave may be temporarily employed in the War Office on clerical work, necessarily of a simple character, because they would not in this particular case be competent for more responsible work ; but this defence, though it applies to some officers employed in the War Office, does not apply to all. General Money's Committee reported that, as a matter of fact, a large number of the attached officers did not belong to this class. Another fact brought out by the Money Committe'e was that within the Adjutant-General's Department there was still a remnant of the old recruiting directorate, whose functions had been transferred to the Ministry of National Service. This remnant appeared to be doing nothing whatever except acting as a post office between the National Service Depart- ment and the Military Secretary's branch of the War Office. The revelation of this particular scandal seems to have been too much even for the complacency of the Army Council, for since the Money Committee reported this little nest of surviving officials has been disbanded. Apart from this, no action appears to have been taken with regard to the recommendations of General Money's Com- mittee. Instead, the Adjutant-General, Sir Neville Macready, issued what can only be described as a defiant refusal to accept the Report of a Committee appointed by the Army Council at the request of a Select Committee of the House of Commons. He claimed that he himself was the only person competent to form any opinion upon the proper numbers and organization of his staff. Yet that staff consists, unless it has since been decreased, of nearly 300 officers, 437 non- commissioned officers and men, 327 male and 854 female civilian clerks—a total of over 1,900. Without questioning the abilities of Sir Neville Macready, it may be asserted unhesitatingly that it is impossible for him to say at any particular moment whether the whole of this gigantic staff is properly organized and properly employed, and that it is his duty to welcome instead of resenting the impartial opinion of an outside investigator, provided of course that that investi- gator is competent for his task. If the investigation into Sir Neville Macready's staff had been conducted by civilians with no experience of military organization, his protest might have had some validity. It was not so conducted. It was conducted by a Committee specially appointed for that purpose by the Army Council itself, and composed of men obviously qualified by their previous experience for the task entrusted to them. Thus, in effect, the Adjutant-General challenges not merely the authority of the House of Commons, which is the paymaster of himself and his staff, but also the authority of the Army Council, his military superiors, and the extraordinary fact is that the Army Council complacently accepts his defiance and passes it on to the House of Commons.
The matter cannot rest here. If any soldier, however distinguished, is to be at liberty to defy his military superiors and the Constitutional governing authority of the nation— namely, the House of Commons—there is an end both to organized military authority and to Constitutional govern- ment. The whole incident goes a .long way to confirm the suspicion, which has long been prevalent in the public mind, that the War Office is being used to an appreciable extent as an " ambuscade " for Army officers who wish to escape service at the front. That such a suspicion should be in any way justified is deplorable. It weakens the whole authority of the Government and of the Army on the question of recruiting. If the War Office itself provides a funk-hole, it is difficult to condemn civilian Departments and private employers for hiding up men who prefer " cushy " jobs at home to service abroad. The matter is clearly one to which the Secretary of State for War ought without delay to devote his personal attention. The public generally has full confidence in Lord Miler's administration. It also understands that his atten- tion is necessarily absorbed by the direct problems of the war. But however great this .pressure upon Lord Milner may be, he cannot afford to neglect the open defiance of Parliamentary authority which the Army Council—presumably in his absence —has sanctioned ; nor can be neglect the fact that the action of the Adjutant-General, unless it be immediately overruled, will be widely quoted to justify the suspicion that the War Office is being used as a refuge for shirkers.
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