[To THE EDITOR Or THE "SPECTATOR. "] SIR,—Your correspondent " Civis
" has fallen into an error in stating that "following upon this inquiry [the House of Lords' Committee] came the restoration of the old Board system by Mr. Goschen (1872), and on the. main linen laid down afresh by him Admiralty work continued until October, 1904" (Spectator, January 5th). This is contrary to the fact. Mr. Goschen did not restore the old Board system; on the contrary, he confirmed Mr. Childers's one-man system by an Order in Council of March 19th, 1872, whereby the First Lord alone was again declared to be responsible to the nation for all the business of the Admiralty, and the other members of the Board were to be responsible no longer to the nation as under the old constitution of the Admiralty, but to the First Lord for so much of the business specified in the Order in Council as he might think fit to assign to them from time to time. "The Board as an administrative body, has practically ceased to exist," Mr. Childers told the Commission on the Megtera ' in 1872; and the one-man system, as opposed to the old Board system, under which all the members of the Board were equally responsible to the nation, has continued to this day.
What Mr. Goschen did was to resume the practice of calling the members of the Board together for consultation, a practice which had almost ceased while Mr. Childers was at the Admiralty; but Mr. Goschen did not restore the old Board system whereby the Board, and not the First Lord only, ruled the Navy. This state of things is a great evil, and is the foes of origo of the present distrust. The First Lord being alone responsible to the nation, all decisions affecting the Navy are his decisions, and the country does not know on whose advice lie may be acting; while the Naval Lords, not being responsible for decisions arrived at, are not called upon to resign should those decisions be taken contrary to their advice. A valuable safeguard for naval efficiency is thus lost to the nation. The system is absolutely unsound which places the whole responsibility for the Navy in the hands of a civilian, who, however able he may be, is not qualified either by training or experience to undertake such a task.—I am,
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