THE RECONSTRUCTION OF THE GOVERNMENT.
ASwe write on Thursday evening no definite informa- tion has been published as to the filling up of the vacant places in the Cabinet, but it is clear that Mr. Balfour is finding the " patching " of his Administra- tion no easy task. Meantime his efforts to pull the Government together, and make up something which will pass muster as a capable and efficient body of Ministers, have been watched by the country with a kind of contemptuous pity. The general feeling has been that it does not much matter who takes what office, as the whole fabric must so soon collapse ; but at the same time the difficulty of fitting the pieces together has, as always, attracted a certain amount of attention. Be the task never so trivial, people always like to watch a man who is in trouble over a difficult job. They want to see whether in the end he will get the old horse on its legs again, or whether he will be forced to give the job up in despair. Two circumstances have added to the interest evoked by the spectacle of Mr. Balfour's struggles to get his cart moving again. Will he be able to persuade Lord Milner to join the Cabinet as Colonial Secretary ? is the first question. The second is, Will he inaugurate a new system at the War Office ? As to Lord Miler's appointment, we can only say that we acknowledge him to be a capable and steadfast administrator, but since he is understood to be a thick- and-thin supporter of Mr. Chamberlain's fiscal policy, we cannot profess to think that his influence would be for good at the Colonial Office. The case of Lord Esher is different. If Lord Esher goes to the War Office, his appointment will have nothing to do with fiscal policy. He will go there solely to inaugurate an entirely new system of administration, and to endeavour to place that dangerously effete institution on a firmer basis. Lord Esher's claim to do this work rests upon the fact that he was a member of the War Commission, and that he wrote a separate Report dealing with the problem of War Office reform. He made, that is, a definite suggestion for changing our system of military administration. He did not merely say that things ought to be better managed, but he proposed a plan for their better management.
Roughly outlined, his scheme is to abolish the offices of Secretary of State for War and Commander-in-Chief, and to substitute for them a Board of War like the Board of Admiralty, which shall rule the Array just as the Naval Board rules the Navy. In other words, just as a Com- mission is issued to execute the office of Lord High Admiral, so a Commission would be issued. to execute the offices of Secretary of State for War and Commander-in- Chief. Speaking generally, we are in entire agreement with Lord 'Esher's scheme, and for the last five or six years have deemed such a change very greatly to be desired. Our only doubt is whether the present moment is well chosen for inaugurating it, and whether the reform might not be prejudiced by being introduced by a failing and discredited Administration. Putting this matter aside, however, for the moment, we should be very glad to see the proposal adopted. The reasons in its favour can be stated without difficulty, and are, to our mind, conclusive. In the first place, the change to a Board would mark a completely new departure, and would greatly help to get rid of the old and bad traditions which now prevail at the War Office. A capable Eastern despot faced with the existing situation would probably have long ago surrounded the War Office some morning between 11 and 12 with a cordon of soldiers, and then have set fire to it, thus getting rid not only of all the traditions, and papers, and red-tape, and forms, and minutes, but also of all the persons con- cerned with the old system. Since, however, such drastic action is impossible, recourse must be had to milder methods likely to produce similar results. We cannot imagine any that would better serve the end in view than the placing of the complete control of the Army in the hands of a Board on the model of the Admiralty. But if this is to be done, and a success achieved, one or two simple principles must be kept in view. The first is that the supreme control must be in the hands of the civilian Cabinet Minister,—i.e., the First Lord of the Military Board must in all cases of dispute say the final word. This is not only essential under our Constitution and system of Parliamentary government, but it is, we believe, conducive to good administration. When the Board is in doubt and difficulty over the views of conflict- ing experts, it is best that the unprejudiced civilian mind should decide. Next to the principle of supreme civilian control, we attach importance to the Board being absolutely supreme over the Army. Its word must be in the last resort the word of the First Lord, but that word must be final, and there must be no possibility of any power or influence coming between the Board and the Army. When the Board has spoken it must be a case of Roma loeuta est, as it is in the Navy. No one attempts to go beyond a decision of the Board of Admiralty. It is because we attach such immense importance to the supremacy of the Board, and to making all the threads centre in the hands of this artificial per- sonality, that we most strongly object to Lord Esher's proposal that beside the Board there should be "a General Officer Commanding the Army responsible to the Secretary of State for the efficiency of the military forces of the Crown." Here it seems to us that Lord, Esher makes a capital error in the art of administrative organisa- tion. Unless his "General Officer Commanding the Army" is either on, or under, the Board, half, nay, the whole, advantage of the Board goes. The result of his inde- pendence of the Board must sooner or later be to under- mine its authority and to make it a mere consultative body,—i.e., to go back to the system of the Secre- tary of State and Commander-in-Chief under another name. If a Board is adopted, then no system must be allowed to grow up independent of it and outside it. The Board must rule the Army.
Another matter of importance is the question whether the military and expert members of the Board should be heads of Departments. Lord Esher proposes that the military members of the Board should be (1) the Adju- tant-General; (2) the Quartermaster-General ; (3) the Director-General of Ordnance ; (4) the Director-General of Military Intelligence. In our opinion, it would be much better to have simply First, Second, and Third Military Lords, and a Junior Military Lord, as-in the Navy. These Lords might sometimes hold the appointments named by Lord Esher, but not necessarily. Inany case, they would sit as coequal . members of the Board, and not as heads of Departments. The advantage of the system we urge is obvious. The Board is responsible for, and must look into, every Department. It will perform this duty much better if the heads of Departments are its servants, and not, as it were, ex officio members of the Board. Finally, we hold that if the Board system be adopted, care should be taken to assimilate the system of working as far as possible to that of the Navy. If this is done, it will prove much easier to work than if new departures are allowed on the plea that the Army is very different from the Navy. The new War First Lord should, that is, be in the position to say, when obstacles are presented to him by officials who dislike the reform : "If they can do it in the Navy, why cannot we do it here ? " We have a safe and sound administrative precedent in the Board of Admiralty; let us stick closely to it, at any rate to begin with. If later real improvements are suggested, they can be gradu- ally adopted. As to the argument that the Army has never been accustomed to be ruled by a Board, and would not endure it, we have only to say that we think the notion unfounded. The Army is trained to obey, and would soon find the fiat of "My Lords" as awe-inspiring as does the Navy. And even supposing that a few officers objected and proved disobedient, no great harm would be done. They could easily be got rid of, and their dis- obedience would be a proof that the nation was losing very little.
Before we leave the subject of War Office reorganisation on Admiralty lines we must notice the extraordinary sug- gestion that instead of abolishing the office of Commander- in-Chief, or, rather, merging his office in the Board, as in Lord Esher's scheme, the King should be appointed as Commander-in-Chief. Those responsible for this grotesque proposal can have given very little thought either to its ,Constitutional or administrative aspects. Its effect must either be nil, or else to involve the Sovereign in the turmoil of politics in a way which might endanger our whole monarchical system. At present the King as Sovereign has a very considerable influence, direct and indirect, both on the Army and Navy. But that influence has reached the maximum of safety. The King could not have more conferred upon him without incurring a personal responsibility, the incurring of which it is the aim of the Constitution to avoid. To put it in another way. If the office of Commander-in-Chief when conferred on the King is to be merely titular, it is giving him what he already possesses in the utmost plenitude. If it is to be a real office, then the King's position must be radically changed, and he will become in a greater or lesser degree responsible to the Cabinet, Parliament, and the nation for various administrative acts. The theory that the King can do no wrong must be abandoned if he is to wield authority in an office. Just imagine the effect of the recent war scandals on the Monarchy if the King a few years previously had assumed the office of Commander-in- Chief. The people in an ugly mood—and at the next fiasco their mood may be far uglier than it is now- wouM in such circumstances be certain to attempt to exact responsibility from the King. They would argue :—‘ Why did he make a change, and take the office of Commander- .in-Chief, if he did not mean to see the thing through properly. We thought that when he took the job on he meant to work at it. Yet matters are as bad as ever, and the whole thing has proved a take-in.' Assuredly no loyal supporter of the Monarchy can wish to run the very_ grave risk of such things being said whenever there "Army scandal." It is essential to keep the King out of Army scandals, and anything tending to bring him into them would be most lamentable. We trust, then, that this notion of making the King Commander- in- Chief— a Constitutional absurdity, by the way, since the King, as the source of all offices, cannot hold any one office himself—will be quickly and finally abandoned by those who have suggested it, or if not, that the King will himself make it clear that a most momentous Constitutional revolution cannot be carried out by a side- wind of this kind, and that he withholds all approval from the suggestion. That be has in fact given it any counte- nance we do not believe for a moment. The King has always shown a very clear grasp of the principles of the Constitution, and. the notion of his backing up so absurd a proposal will not be accepted by the nation without very much stronger evidence than that at present adduced in its favour.
Previous page
