THE WAR OFFICE.
THE countryman who looks up at the most conspicuous of the Government offices in Whitehall, and is told that it is the new War Office, may sometimes wish to know—the Londoner attitude towards the sea ; and in Chance he records the odd • The Making of the Roman People. By Thomas Lloyd. Lcinlon Long-mans Co 9117 h; 6OdibeneetPast and Pr t. By Captain Owen Wheeler, London: seldom cares to learn anything about his own city—what is the relation between the building and the Army which is now so much in all our minds and hearts. He will find just what be wants in The War Office, Past and Present. Captain Wheeler does not pretend to give his readers any facts which are not "accessible to any one who will take the necessary pains to collect them." But he is the first man who has taken the pains in question, and the result is a convenient outline of the slow development of the British Army as it exists to-day. He begins in 1620, the year of the appearance of that Com- mittee of the Privy Council which in the end became a War Office. But most readers will be more likely to start with 1854 and the creation of a "Secretary of State for War." Between that year and 1868 the office was held by eight Secretaries, which gives about two years to each occupant, and this fact alone will explain the absence of any changes of moment. But in December of the latter year Mr. Cardwell became War Secretary, and took in hand the completion of the departmental reconstruction begun under the Duke of Newcastle, the abolition of the purchase system, and the introduction of short service. "With extraordinary courage and tenacity he advanced boldly along all these three lines," and his persistence did him the more credit as the Government of -which be was a member was pledged to reduce the Estimates. One feature of the reconstruction was the disappearance of the Commander-in-Chief from the Horse Guards. The Duke of Cambridge and Queen Victoria were both opposed to this change, and in the first instance Cardwell seems not to have realized its necessity. He changed his mind, however, after the publication of the Northbrook Report, and in the end the Commander-in-Chief's subordination to the Secretary of State was made visible by his removal to the War Office. It seems hardly credible that a system so injurious to the best interests of the Army as the purchase of commissions should have found many supporters even in 1871, and even in the end had to be abolished by Royal Warrant instead of by Act of Parliament. Mr. Gladstone's method of carrying his point was much criticized at the time, but Captain Wheeler declares his conviction—the conviction, he is careful to tell us, of "a lifelong Conservative, with a strong anti- Gladstonian bias "—that the course adopted was "both the right and the only one." Purchase was simply an expedient for enabling rich men to buy promotion for themselves or their sons. Some attempt had been made to keep down the prices, but, though the regulation sum paid for a cavalry lieutenant-colonelcy was £6,175, the actual price was £14,000, and often more. The third change involved was the creation of a Reserve and the localization of recruiting. It was intended to offer inducements to a class of men to enter the Army who did not enter it then, though much remains to be done in order to carry out this last object. But, in Captain Wheeler's opinion, "fundamentally we have to-day the same basic principles underlying our military system as those on which Mr. Cardwell reared his great system of Army reform." Captain Wheeler duly chronicles the later changes, whether attempted by Mr. Arnold-Forster or actually carried out in pursuance of the recommendations of the Esher Com- mission, but his enthusiasm is reserved for the chapter which bears the title of "The Coming of Cardwell."
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