THE COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF.
WE are glad to note that the Daily Chronicle is bringing before the country the question of waste in the -Army, and pointing out, what we believe to be nothing Item than the fact,—namely, that we do not get full value for our money. Especially are we glad that the question of the Commander-in-Chief is being brought to the front, though we think it was foolish of the Daily Chronicle to prejudice its case—an excellent case—by a personal attack on the Duke of Cambridge. The question of the Commander-in- Chief of the Army will sooner or later have to be discussed and settled, and it is most important that a wise decision should be arrived at. But there is considerable reason to fear that the question may be rushed,—that is, settled beforehand in private, and carried out before there is time to consult the public. We are in danger, that is, of bearing on one and the same day that the Duke of Cambridge has resigned, and that his successor has been appointed. That would be de- plorable, and the best way to prevent it, is to have the subject threshed out beforehand, and the will of the country made so clear on the point that it will be impossible for any Ministry to ignore it. The problem which presents itself when put fairly, and stripped of all adventitious accretions is,—" Shall we have another Royal Duke as Commander-in-Chief, or shall we appoint the best and most experienced soldier we can find ? " Many people are inclined to jump at once to the conclusion that this question can only be answered by deciding against the Royal Duke, and adopting the best qualified General in the Army. We do not, however, think that the matter can be settled quite so simply. There are two sides to the question, and each requires to be carefully considered.
Let us take the arguments for the Royal Duke first. In the first place, it is said that the practical convenience of having a Royal Duke at the head of the Army is very great. As the Royal Duke is chosen not by merit, but owing to his birth, his appointment gives no umbrage. The Generals who are net chosen for the supreme post do not feel that they are slighted by being passed over for a Royal Duke. Their acquiescence is not even sombre, but perfectly cheerful. Again, a Royal Duke can probably prevent a certain class of jobbery better than an ordinary soldier. He may, no doubt, job for the Court, and for families and connections which are specially well viewed by the Royal Family ; but he can, on the other hand, far better resist the pressure of a number of powerful cliques when they clamour to have their nominees preferred. People are ashamed to ask very obvious jobs from Royal Highnesses. Again, there is probably a better chance with a Royal Duke that promotion will not be obtained by backstairs family influence,—by the influence, that is, of the wife, sisters, cousins, and aunts of the Commander-in-Chief. The Royal Duke's womankind have not got a host of professional relations who " only want a start to be recognised as the ablest men in the Army." As regards illegitimate female influence, however, it cannot be said that the balance is in favour of a Royal Duke. It must not be forgotten that it was the mistress of a Royal Duke Commander-in-Chief (Mrs. Clarke) who sold promotion so openly that she actually caused the resignation of her protector, the Duke of York. The argument that for dynastic reasons the Commander- in-Chief ought to be a member of the Royal family, was one which once had a good deal of weight, but it cannot now be considered seriously. It supposes that the Army might possibly be used against the people to support the Monarchy. Fortunately, there is little or no risk of any such antagonism taking place, but if it ever did, we may depend upon it that a Royal Duke as Commander-in-Chief would not be able to save the Crown. Indeed, in case of friction, he might be far more likely to jeopardise it by suggesting to a proud and not always very reasonable people that they were the subjects of tyranny, and were being dragooned out of their rights by a member of the Royal Family. In truth, the only serious argument, and we admit it is a serious one, for choosing a Royal Duke as Commander-in-Chief is that which makes a cricket club choose for its president not its best player, but a distinguished and high-born amateur, whose pre- ferment will cause no jealousy, and who may be depended on to make up the teams without remembering that his wife's brother, though untried as a bowler, is very anxious to get a chance of showing what he is made of.
The arguments against appointing a Royal Duke Com- mander-in-Chief, and naming instead the best man pro- curable, are not difficult to set forth. In the first place, the only way to secure real efficiency is to have at the head of the service a man who has not travelled the royal road of honorary preferment, but who has literally fought his way to the top of his profession, has bivouacked on the hard ground, and has had a real experience of every grade from that of subaltern to General. No doubt every now and then an exceptional man will come in at the top of a business, no matter how complicated, and partly by good advice and partly by instinct, will become a first-class organiser. As a rule, however, no man fully succeeds in working a corn. plicated organisation, such as an army, who has not been right through the mill from top to bottom, and not as the employer's son often goes through it, but as the ordinary man. It stands to reason, that other things being equal, it must be better to have the Army in the hands of a, veteran chosen by reason of his service qualities, than of a person chosen because he is a grand- son, or a. great-grandson of George III. No doubt it will be said that it is quite possible to find a Royal Duke who is also a veteran possessed of the highest qualifica- tions. We remember, for example, when Mr. Campbell- Bannerman explained to the House of Commons, that the law of natural selection inevitably and inexorably picked out a Royal Duke to succeed Sir Evelyn Wood at Alder- shot. The War Office looked around for the best man qualified, and found that, unless they acted with gross partiality, they must take a son of the Queen. In the same way we shall very likely be told that the policy of selecting the best qualified man from a purely military standpoint will certainly instal a Royal Duke at the Horse Guards. But shall we be wise to accept so singular a coincidence between birth and merit and experience, without a little hesitation ? Will it really be wise to stake the efficiency of the Army upon so astonishingly convenient an accident as that which makes a Royal Duke also the fittest Commander-in-Chief ? It has too much the look of a reductio ad absurdum to commend it to the approval of reason and common-sense. But even if there were a Royal Duke available who was the best and most experienced General in the Army, we should be in favour of passing him over. And for this reason. We want a man of the most unyielding kind at the head of the Army, —a man who will, if it is in the interests of the service, endure any amount of unpopularity, and bear, with a, shrug of his shoulders, any quantity of offensive questions in Parliament and waspish newspaper articles ; a man, in fact, who will have the hide of a rhinoceros, and care not a snap of the fingers whether he is popular or unpopular as long as he is making the Army into an efficient fighting machine. But you can never get a Royal Duke to do this. It is, indeed, inconsistent with the best interests of the Monarchy and the nation that he should be able to play such a part. Every Royal Duke is, and is bound to be by the nature of his position, to some extent a popularity hunter. He is trained to preserve his dignity and his standing in the country, not by grimly sticking to his guns, but by making himself generally popular. Instinctively a Royal Highness avoids letting it be known which side he takes, for fear of making enemies of this or that set of men. Witness the Prince of Wales's note to the Report on the Aged Poor Commission. He could have signed a unanimous Report ; but when the Commissioners disagreed, he virtually withdrew, and stated that he could not pro- nounce on a disputed point. That he was acting wisely, and setting an excellent example to all other Royal High- nesses, we do not doubt for a moment. We merely point out that this, the instinctive attitude of our Royalties, is not the attitude for a practical Commander-in-Chief determined to be the most hated and ridiculed man in the country rather than that the Army should run any risk of losing the full amount of efficiency of which it is capable. A Royal Duke would be bound every now and then to feel If I insist on this point, I shall for six months draw down on myself a perfect storm of obloquy and abuse. If it were only myself I should not care ; but the Monarchy will be involved. I do not, there- fore, dare to check the abuse in question. It had better run on than give people a chance to attack the whole Royal Family through me.' This inherent timidity, this tendency to consider public opinion, which is rightly incidental to, and inseparable from, Royal Princes, might take even a worse form in the case of popular commotions. Suppose a great deal of distress all over England, and as a result, rioting so furious and so general, that it would be necessary to use the troops freely, to confer special powers on the Commander-in-Chief, and to ask him to take special responsibilities in regard to when and how troops should be used. Can any one suppose that a Royal Duke would be able to accept this responsibility as effectively as an ordinary man ? He would be per- petually hampered by the feeling that if he acted with severity, he would become another Butcher Cumberland, and would so injure the Throne. Yet severity might at the moment be necessary to save the State. Again, in the case of a serious mutiny—and mutiny is by no means impossible merely because it has not occurred within living memory—could a Royal Duke be trusted to behave inexorably ? If a dozen men had to be shot for mutiny, think of the petitions for mercy. If a plain General were Commander-in-Chief, the Cabinet could stand firmly by him, and the Sovereign even could say, when appealed to, that she could not interfere with the action of the Com- mander-in-Chief. If, however, the Commander-in-Chief were a Royal Duke, every one would be trying to shelter him from the unpopularity of refusing to reconsider the death-sentences. Instead of being a strength he would be a weakness.
We have shown how a Royal Duke Commander-iu- Chief prevents efficiency from being secured in the Army, and how he is liable to consider first, not the Army, but his position as member of the Royal caste. It remains to point out how much damage a weak and unsuccessful or a. corrupt Royal Duke Commander-in-Chief might do to the Monarchy. Suppose a Commander-in-Chief were to get into bad hands and were to muddle and job the Army to such an extent that there was a scandal like that of eighty-six years ago. In the case of an ordinary General no great harm would be done. If the Commander-in-Chief were a Royal Duke, the Monarchy would be shaken to its foundations. Again, if a Royal Duke lost his head at a time of riot, and said or did foolish things, things which made the people believe that Royalty was not impartial, but against them, the injury to the dynasty might be irrepar- able. We can imagine nothing which would do more to republicanise England than a weak or an injudicious Royal Duke in the position of Commander-in-Chief. No- doubt, in the case of the Royal Duke occasionally desig- nated to succeed the Duke of Cambridge, there would be no fear of a Mrs. Clarke scandal, but this is not enough. We want it made certain that neither the efficiency of the Army shall be sacrificed nor the popularity of the dynasty endangered by the appointment of a Royal Prince to the office of Commander-in-Chief. If we were anxious to see the Monarchy come to an end, or be weakened in the popular estimation, nothing would please us better than to have another Royal Duke as Commander-in-Chief. But we are not anxious to see the Queen the last ruler of the House of Hanover. We- believe that our present system of Government is as. perfect an instrument as could possibly be devised, an& we view with the utmost alarm any tendencies that go towards injuring it. We want to keep the office of Commander-in-Chief out of a Royal Duke's hands, quite as much in the interests of the Monarchy as in the interests of the Army.
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