TOPICS OF THE DAY.
WAR OFFICE REFORM AND THE WAR. THE unsatisfactory condition of our military affairs has filled the country with cries for War Office reform,—cries which in the main have been amply justified by events, but which in certain cases have been wild and ill-directed. No one believes more strongly than we do—and our belief is not a thing of yesterday—that we want a thorough reform of the Army, and a complete alteration of present War Office methods ; but the reform, to be effectual, must be wise and patient and well thought out, not rash and confused and ill-considered. But rash and confused and ill-con- sidered it will certainly be if we give heed to some of the demands made, even by very able men. Take, for example, the suggestion made in several quarters that we ought to have a military member of the Cabinet, or that the Secretary of War should be a soldier. That is not the way to reform the Army. To hand over the Army to the military experts, and to let them do what they will with it while the civilians stand aside entirely and do nothing but pay the bill, would, we believe, prove the most certain way possible for producing as inefficient, red-tape-bound, inelastic, petrified an Army as could be devised by the mind of man. If we are wise we shall still insist upon civilian control, not in minor details, but at the very top, though of course we shall see that the civilian who controls is a man with a shrewd head and a strong character, capable of judging men, and of doing disagreeable and unpleasant things, such as mercilessly shunting highly-placed inefficients when such shunting is necessary. We believe that it is hardly too much to say that most of the real reforms made in the Army during the last thirty years have come from civilians, acting of course with the aid of the soldier expert's knowledge, but distinguishing by the use of common-sense and good judgment the wise expert from the foolish. The War Office keeps its secrets, and we cannot prove our asser- tion from internal evidence. We may, however, instance an example of civilian advice from outside which, as the event has proved, was of the utmost importance. Mr. Arnold - Forster several years ago protested in the strongest terms against our negligence in the matter of artillery and our folly in not supplying more guns. No doubt he had plenty of military support among the younger and unofficial soldiers, but we have yet to learn that be was supported by the official military experts at the War Office,—the men into whose hands the Army would be infallibly placed if it were to be handed over to the soldier pure and simple.
It could easily be shown that under our democratic political system the Army must always be under the con- trol of the civilians, because we are ruled by civilians, because our foreign policy is controlled by them, and because they have to determine the uses of the Army. The soldiers are our fighting servants, and must take their orders from the civilians who rule the nation. We need not, however, trouble to go into this abstract question, because, in our opinion, it is absolutely certain that proper civilian control is far better for the Army, and produces far more beneficial results than banding it over to the experts. Of course, all depends upon what is meant by proper civilian control. We will try to define on broad lines what we mean thereby, premising our remarks with the declaration that we do not consider that the present system in any way provides proper civilian control, but is on the contrary a most unhappy and ill- starred compromise, which allows the civilian and military elements at the War Office to play all day at a kind of hunt- the-slipper with such essential things as responsibility and control, and almost invariably ends by losing those essentials altogether. So skilful, indeed, have they become that at the War Office they really manage to do things for which no one can fairly be said to be responsible. Under proper civilian control there should be a Secretary of State for War with a seat in the Cabinet, who should be responsible to the nation for the efficiency of the Army in all its parts. Under him there must be a soldier, best called the Commander- in-Chief, who should be at the War Office and iu the Army exactly what the permanent head is at the India Office or the Treasury or the Board of Trade,—that is, the per- manent and official alter ego of the Secretary of State ; the man, that is, who is absolutely supreme in the Depart- ment, saving only the Cabinet Minister who ishis chief. important decisions permanent head, of course, goes over all the mportant decisions with his chief, and when he has got that chief's consent he wields all his thunder. Assuming agreement with his chief, the Commander-in-Chief—i.e., the perma- nent official bead of the Army—would be as completely supreme as the Sirdar is in the Egyptian Army at this moment when he has obtained Lord Cromer's assent to a certain course of action. The civilian chief would not, of course, go behind his military alter ego's back and take independently the opinions of the heads of sections—as it is said he does now in the case of the Headquarter Staff—any more than does the Secretary of State for India, though he would see that the permanent head of the Army gave proper weight to them. But it may be said that under such a system as we suggest the civilian head would be nowhere, and the permanent military head would have that complete and absolute control which we have said ought not to be given to military experts. Those who argue thus have not considered the matter properly. The civilian Cabinet Minister, if he is the able man of strong character and cool head we have assumed as essential, will bring a clear and independent judgment in regard to all military matters, and will exercise a most beneficial and practical control. He will insist, for example, on every important appointment and action being fully explained to him and fully justified by the permanent chief before he gives his consent, and the need for this explanation and justification will have the most salutary effect. If the military head of the Army—i.e., the acting Commander-in-Chief—were in the Cabinet, and were to make the appointments without control, many bad appoint- ments, due to laziness or kindliness, would go through. When a man feels : I shall not be able to justify that appointment if the Secretary of State goes into it, as he is sure to do,' the appointment is not even proposed. In nothing, indeed, is proper civilian control more useful than in appointments. The Secretary of State was not at Sand- hurst with "poor old Jones" in the "sixties," at the Staff College with Smith, or with Brown in such and such a regiment in India. Hence he has no temptation to stretch a point for an old comrade. He insists upon having each appointment defended on its merits, and is con- vinced not by kindheartedness, but by being shown that the general proposed for a. command did well here, made no blunders there, and is in full health and mental vigour. Again, the civilian Secretary of State for War can ask whether it is not true that the general proposed has not perpetually blundered through his rashness or muddleheadedness or what not, and can check the very amiable, very natural desire to give an old comrade and an " exceptionally bravo officer " another chance. In fact, the Secretary of State for War can make what people call "a brute of himself," and be hard and merciless and disagreeable,—things very necessary in the iron workshop of war. And not only in the matter of appointments can the really able civilian hold his own. He can do work of the highest value in judging between conflicting experts, and in using his common-sense to point out simple but vastly important things which the exports, immersed in technicalities and details, do not perceive. There never yet was a technical business which was not from time to time improved by the man of common-sense outside who said : I dare say there is some reason I don't realise why you can't, but how is it you don't do this or that?' Sometimes there is a good answer, but once in, say, ten or twenty times the honest and open-minded expert has to say : By Jove, so we could,—what fools we were not to think of that before.'
Before we leave the subject of supreme civilian control in the Army we must say a word as to the kind of man wanted for the post. It is clear that he must be a man of exceptional character and ability, and such men are, of course, rare. Still, they do exist, and when found must be kept for the War Office. It is more important to have a strong man at the War Office than even at the Admiralty, for the War Office is the more difficult job of the two,— especially as regards appointments. Inefficiency in a soldier is more easily concealed than in a sailor. The difficulties of handling a big battleship make it almost impossible forty really inefficient Captain to survive. Physical conditions weed out the bad sailors. In the Army, unfortunately, a very dull, weak man may rise to command a regiment, and if he is not found out there, to command a brigade and then a force in the field. A good Secretary of State with an eye for men weeds out such men before they reach the high commands. A correspon- dent in a private letter puts so ably some of the qualities which should belong to a really efficient Secretary of War that we venture to quote them :—" I feel that a great nobleman is not the person to whom the country can look for a really thorough and merciless exposure of the causes of our present inefficiency. We require a man brought up, not like a man of vast estates usually is, to consider serenity and absence of detail work the principal conditions to conduct a Depart- ment with success." He goes on to say that what we require at the head of the Army is "a man accustomed, not only to do things for himself, and to go into all details, but who has not the traditions of a great noble- man to maintain, and who can afford, without fear of loss of caste, to expose his subordinates in every branch of the service which is under his care. This is done by every private business man, and I see no reason why the same class of stern manager should be absent from our War Office in future years." We hold that there is a great deal in this, though we would not rule out any man merely on the ground of birth, though we should certainly prefer a poor Peer . to a very wealthy one. What we want is a hard, efficient man, with no bowels of compassion, and also one quite incapable of falling into the hands of a ring. We do not in the least despair of finding such men. We may name one whom we believe would do the work admirably,—Sir Michael Hicks-Beach. He is credited with being hard and merciless, and an exposer of shams and inefficiencies. In that case he is just the man for the War Office. His love of economy will be no obstacle. Lavishness is not what is wanted, but value for the national expenditure. Let our people banish from their minds once and for all the notion that they can get a good Army merely by drawing big cheques. It is just the reverse. It is efficiency and economy that go hand in hand, not efficiency and lavishness. The most efficient Army we have seen in this generation was the Egyptian Army as organised by Lord Kitchener, and that was an Army where every half-farthing was considered before it was spent. To sum up, what we want is,—(1) not to sup- press the civilian element at the War Office, but to give it proper shape and form, and to restrict the civilian and military elements to their proper functions ; (2) to choosethe proper stamp of man for War Secretary ; (3) to see that our money is well spent and not squandered,—i.e., spent on necessaries like plenty of new guns, and not muddled away in a kind of Chinese officialism,—an officialism, by the way, which soldiers are quite as prone to yield to as are civilians. ?c.o.. 410 (as. rti4Cl l�
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