SIR MICHAEL HICKS BEACH AND THE WAR OFFICE.
[TO THE EDITOR OF THE "8PECTALT011.1 Sin,—Sir Michael Hicks Beach, as you truly say in the Spectator of October 4th, has either told us too much or too little. He must let the rest of the cat out of the bag, and tell us what the "outside influences" are which weigh with the War Office, and on which side of it, the civil or the military. Some may think that the close of a war in which the devotion shown by the officers of the Army, one and all, has certainly never been surpassed is hardly the time to run amok against their zeal and attention to their duties. Or is it their education that Sir Michael ands fault with ? For a quarter of a century politicians—I
cannot, with one or two exceptions, call them statesmen—have been paramount at the War Office, and any course of instruc. tion they chose to order would have been carried out. Sir Michael himself has been in office—of course I mean when his party was in power—since 1874, and a leading member of the Government too. Has he ever pressed on his fellow. Ministers the reforms he seems to think necessary ? He certainly has taken the earliest advantage of his position of "less responsibility and greater freedom" to act the part of candid friend to his late colleagues. He owes it to him- self and to the country to say why he has kept silence all this time, why he breaks it now. I am old enough to remember the muddle of the War Office at the time of the Crimean War,—parsimony at the beginning, the Treasury refusing to send out hay for the horses, to be atoned for later on by squandering millions. Then, as now, the civilian tried to make the soldier the scape- goat. Then, as now, all men agreed that the War Office was hopelessly rotten to the core; but when the war was over, so was the passion for reform. Will history repeat itself? We have one strong man who has proved his capacity ; but we shall not employ him ; the vested interests are too strong. Now, as then, the stress being over, we shall fold our hands again to slumber; there will be no Hercules to cleanse the Augean stable; and when the next war comes there will be the same jeremiads about the iniquities of the War Office.—I am, [If Sir Michael Hicks Beach will now speak out, we think he may very fairly claim to be absolved from any reproof for not having spoken earlier. Besides, if any blame attaches to him for previous silence, it must be borne equally by all his colleagues.—En. Spectator.]
Previous page
