THE ADMIRALTY.
[To Tax EDITOR Op THE SPECTATOR."]
Sin.,—Mr. Spenser Wilkinson addressed to you a letter (Spectator, April 17th) relating to a communication which he had made to the Army and Navy Gazette on the above subject, and, as editor of that paper, I feel that his remarks call for some comment from me. He says that be, and the " school " to which he belongs, ,bold very strongly that the present organisation of the Admiralty is defective in that it does not make proper provision for securing to the Government the advice of a competent strategist. The Army and Navy Gazette had quoted a passage from his pamphlet entitled "Time Command of the Sea" in which be had pictured his ideal naval " cemmander " in terms that seemed to describe the purposes, opportunities, and measures of a competent and capable First Sea Lord, and the paper bad said: "As every one knows, we have got such a man in authority." That snch is the case Mr. Wilkinson stoutly denies in his letter to the Spectator. The conclusion of the passage from his pamphlet is as follows : "The essential thing is to put knowledge in authority; knowledge means a man, not a committee, and the knowledge wanted ie of war." He seems to complain that the Army and Navy Gazette bad omitted the latter clause, though its purport had been given in what preceded. His very remarkable comment in the Spectator deserves to be quoted :—
"1 think it must be clear that the knowledge to which I wished to see authority given was primarily strategical, and I have entirely failed to see in any of the distributions or redistributions of fleets which have been made under the authority of the present First Sea Lord any trace of strategical knowledge."
Surely, if words mean anything, it is here implied that Mr. Spenser Wilkinson considers himself to possess greater strategic competence than the present First Sea Lord; than those statesmen who have placed him in power ; and than the several Sea Lords who have been, and are, responsible with hint for those strategic dispositions which are a mystery to Mr. Wilkinson. It may be further assumed that Mr. Wilkinson coneiders that he would be better able to make a suitable choice of the officer to hold the position of First Sea Lord than those who are responsible for the duty of making that selection.
Some light is thrown upon the methods of the present dis- cussion when we find a private citizen setting himself up to speak es cathedra on matters of this kind. Apparently Mr.
Wilkinson would like to have a "brain" for the Navy outside the .Board of Admiralty, which might, and probably would, end in dual control ; but, out of deference to naval traditions, be would be content to make the First Sea Lord responsible for strategy and tactics, the strategical and tactical training of officers, and the distribution and movements of the Fleet. It is not easy to see that this arrangement would differ greatly from the present system, except by depriving the officer responsible for preparation for war of the very essential direction of mobilisation, perhaps of the direction of the Intelligence Department, which is his Staff, and of the control of the Hydrographical and Naval Ordnance Departments, the
[It is always easy to make the dialectical point against a critic made above—" So you think you know better than other people P"—but such an objection to criticism is not very useful. The valid objection would be to show Mr. Spenser Wilkinson incompetent, and ignorant of, or wrong in, the principles of strategy. Though we are far from wishing to represent Mr. Spenser Wilkinson as infallible, it seems to us that he has a perfect right to express his views. If such criticism as his is to be smothered on the ground that he cannot know as much about naval strategy as Sir John Fisher, it will be a bad day for the Navy and the nation. Honest and careful criticism is the antiseptic which prevents degeneration in the fighting Services.—ED. Spectator.]
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