TOPICS OF THE DAY.
CABINET RESPONSEBILITY.
VEmaintenance of Cabinet responsibility, that is, the responsibility of the Cabinet as a whole for the acts of individual Ministers, is of the utmost importance for the welfare of the nation. It is only through such Cabinet responsibility that the country can hope to obtain a strong, coherent, and therefore successful administration of its affairs. If once we admit that Cabinet Ministers can shrug their shoulders at the actions of a colleague and say that his mistakes or his negligence are his affair and that they have no share in the blame—if, in fact, the Government are treated as if the great Officee were in water-tight com- partments, we than never be able to hold the Ministry accountable for their actions, and force them to observe that vigilance and high sense of duty in regard to the work of Government without which the affairs of the nation are sure to fall into disorder. VEmaintenance of Cabinet responsibility, that is, the responsibility of the Cabinet as a whole for the acts of individual Ministers, is of the utmost importance for the welfare of the nation. It is only through such Cabinet responsibility that the country can hope to obtain a strong, coherent, and therefore successful administration of its affairs. If once we admit that Cabinet Ministers can shrug their shoulders at the actions of a colleague and say that his mistakes or his negligence are his affair and that they have no share in the blame—if, in fact, the Government are treated as if the great Officee were in water-tight com- partments, we than never be able to hold the Ministry accountable for their actions, and force them to observe that vigilance and high sense of duty in regard to the work of Government without which the affairs of the nation are sure to fall into disorder.
Unfortunately there has been a marked tendency of late among the critics of the Ministry to give support to this dangerous view of individual rather than of collective responsibility by levelling their criticism by name at the heads of special Ministers, and by attempting to hold these Ministers personally responsible for the action taken by their Departments. When we deprecate this singling out of individual Ministers for personal attack, it must not be supposed that we object to criticism. On the contrary, we hold it in itself, and if justly applied and without prejudice, to be essential to good government. Criticism is the necessary antiseptic of administration, and we are convinced that without it we shall never get good management of public affairs whether in war or peace. It is only when Ministers and the Departments over which they preside know that they will be exposed to criticism if they go wrong, that we can feel sure that they will take the maximum of trouble to avoid false steps. Man is a lazy animal, even when the greatest interest. are involved, and will idle and shirk if he dares.
A very good reason why criticism of individualblinisters is almost sure to prove impotent is to be found in the secrecy with which, quite properly, Ministerial decisions are arrived at. When a Minister's acts are criticized it is not safe to assume that those acts were purely his. It may often turn out that, though he may appear to have been acting on his own, he can defend himself by saying that be was acting at the suggestion of the Cabinet. A critic ought not, of course, to cease criticizing for this reason, but to put the question which must always follow i criticism, not in the form "Why did the Minister do it?" but "Why did the Cabinet do it ?" or, what is perhaps nearer the essential point, " Why did the Cabinet allow the Minister to do it ? " To put the matter quite plainly, the only people who can effectively control Minis- terial action and prevent the country from being committed to a dangerous policy are a Minister's own colleagues. They alone know all the facts. They alone know why such-and- such a course was taken. They atone can atop dangerous action before it is too late—before the nation is committed to courses which too often it does not discover are dangerous till a point is reached where going back would be even worse than going forward. The colleagues of a Minister who is solely responsible for hie own acts do not trouble to exercise control over him. If, however, the rule of collective Cabinet responsibility is strictly enforced, they feel that unless they are vigilant to watch, criticize, and so prevent him from taking dangerous action with- out due consideration, they will be held as responsible for his actions as he is himself, and will incur all the penalties of failure. Again, if the rule of collective respon- sibility is properly enforced by the nation, a Minister's colleagues will feel that they have a right to demand knowledge of what is going on, and to express their opinion upon every great act of policy before it is put into operation. If the sense of collective responsibility is weak, a powerful Minister is only too likely to say to his colleagues —in effect, though of course not in so many words "This is my affair, and no business of yours. If I like to take my political life in my hand and run the risk and incur -the responsibility of failure, I have a right to do so, and,
you cannot complain. I de not interfere in my colleagues' Departments, and I expect them not to interfere in mine."
When the responsibility is common the demand for non- interference cannot be used to obtain autocratic power. If the rest of the Cabinet can retort '• Your failure if it comes will be our failure," the supervision of which we have spoken acts automatically. A M'inister's colleagues, since they know that they cannot by any possibility be absolved from the joint responsibility, will insist that no all-important steps shall be taken upon the mere impulse of one man. Perhaps it will be said that this view of ours will tend to give too great latitude to a Minister, that of necessity a good many things have to be done, especially in war time, without consultation with col- leagues; and that therefore, although the theory of collective responsibility may be sound per se, it can only be applied with certainty in a small number of cases. Our answer is as follows. We admit that Cabinet Ministers in many cases cannot control their colleagues, and that they can only find out what has been done after it has been done. But in that case the question arises : How many chances is a Minister to have of doing unwise things ? It is to be feared that if the notion of individual responsibility is allowed to gain ground, as unquestionably it has been gaining ground in the last ten years, the maxim of " Don't interfere with me and I won't interfere with you "will tend to make the members of the Cabinet stick together, and, as it were, take in the washing of each other's dirty linen. Jones, Smith, and Robinson will stand by Brown in a tight place because they have a lively expectation that he will do the same by them if they should happen to be in trouble. If, however, the nation insists on rigorously enforcing the rule of collective responsibility, it is a very different matter. Then, in effect, public opinion says to Ministers " It is quite true that you could not prevent So-and-so from making the mistake he did, but if you now continue to tolerate his presence in the Efiniatry alter a second or third blunder you must remember that you will be abso- lutely endorsing and sharing his mistakes and making them your own. If things go wrong again the country will not tolerate for an instant the plea that it was not your mistake, but only your colleague's. In that case they will remorselessly enforce the rule that Ministerial acts are the acts of the Ministry, and that the only way by which a Cabinet can escape from the penalties of failure is by getting rid of a Minister whosemethods of con- ducting his business have turned out to be dangerous." It was because of this insistence that Ministers must stand together that it was a commonplace in old days for members of the Cabinet to say of some particular project : " Thia must go before the Cabinet and be properly explained to them, and I must get full endorsement for what I propose to do before I stir an inch in the matter. I am not going to risk a disavowal." Of course there were disadvantages in this system, and it often led to a certain paralysis of action, but at any rate it did ensure the only supervision which is possible in a secret, and necessarily secret, committee like the Cabinet—the super- vision of a man's colleagues. Cabinet Ministers in former days knew that they would all be committed by the deeds of a fellow-Minister, and therefore they insisted upon being fully consulted before important action was taken. It will be said, of course, that all this is impossible in the big Cabinets of the present day. If that is so, it is a reason against big Cabinets, and not against collective responsibility. But even if big Cabinets are declared to be a necessity there is another way of meeting this objec- tion. The Prime Minister and the inner Cabinet can act, as it were, as trustees for their colleagues. If a Minister has secured the endorsement of the Prime Minister and the inner Cabinet before he takes action, it may be assumed that the rest of his colleagues will at any rate endorse the initial action. As an illustration of what we have been saying, take the case of the criticism which has been levelled— possibly unfairly levelled—against Mr. Winston Churchill in the last few days. It is admitted that it was a great mistake to begin an attack on the Dardanelles with a purely naval force, and before the largeland force which is new in operation there had been got together. An attempt has been made to fasten the responsibility for this dangerous blunder—for blender it certainly was—upon Mr. Winston Churchill- It is asserted that the unsupported naval
action was purely due to his personal and impulsive initia- tive, as was also the case with the planning and conduct of the operations to relieve Antwerp. It is further alleged as regards the Dardanelles, though whether with truth we know not, that the Sea Lords on the Board of Admiralty objected to Mr. Churchill's scheme and registered protests against it. Our point is that, if it is true that Mr. Churchill acted on his own initiative and did not obtain the full consent of his colleagues to his schemes before be put them into operation, then his colleagues should take stock of the whole position and proceed to appropriate action as soon as possible. If, how- ever, they endorsed his proposals, then they are as responsible as be is. Further, they must be held to have endorsed them if they continue to serve with him. In any case, the proper plan for the critic, is to criticize the Government and not merely the individual Minister Finally, they ought to make it clear that if the Govern- ment only assented, as is sometimes alleged in their defence, to a general scheme, and Mr. Churchill carried it out on wtong lines, they cannot escape by such a plea if they continue the administration of the Board of Admiralty by their colleague.
The Government cannot have it both ways. We must enforce the responsibility of the Cabinet as a whole. If not, and if various Ministers are allowed to act on their own without that co-ordination which comes from the maintenance of collective responsibility, we shall be in imminent danger. On the merits of the case which we have taken for illustration we pronounce no final opinion, because the facts are not known to us, but only to the Government. Our object in writing as we have written is to point out to the public that they will never obtain proper control of their affairs if they once abandon the safeguard of collective Cabinet responsibility and allow individual responsibility to be substituted for it. We must never permit Govern- ments to answer criticism by saying : "Please, Sir, it was not us. It was that impulsive fellow Blank. We always thought that he would make a mess of it, and he has. No one can control him." Our answer must be : "But it was your business to control him. If you endorse his action by keeping him where he is, on your heads will be his blunders." If once Governments are made to feel that, we shall get Ministerial supervision. Without it we shall get none. The House of Commons, owing to the extremity of the party system, has become utterly incapable of controlling the persons to whom it delegates national affairs. Unless the Cabinet control their members, it becomes a case of mere " Go as you please."
Here is our final word. Those—and they are many— who, though they have no personal feeling against Mr. Churchill, have come to regard him as a public danger, and desire that he shall not remain in his present position, should remember that they will never see him moved from the Admiralty unless they insist upon the collective respon- sibility of the Cabinet in the fullest sense. They must make Mr. Churchill's colleagues realize that they are one and all individually responsible for his acts, and that when he commits himself he commits them. Only by making them feel thus can a remedy be provided.
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