In August, 1886, I was appointed junior lord at the Admiralty, succeeding Captain James E. Erskine.
"No doubt you'll try to do a number of things, but you'll run up against a dead wall. Your sole business will be to sign papers," said Captain Erskine, and so departed.
I speedily discovered that there was at the Admiralty no such thing as organisation for war. It was not in the distribution of business. Lest I should seem to exaggerate, I quote the testimony of the late Sir John Briggs, Reader to the Lords and Chief Clerk of the Admiralty. Referring to the period with which I am dealing, Sir John Briggs writes as follows (Naval Administrations, 1827 to 1892. Sampson Low. 1897):
"During my Admiralty experience of forty-four years, I may safely affirm that no measures were devised, nor no practical arrangements thought out, to meet the numerous duties which devolve upon the Admiralty, and which at once present themselves at the very beginning of a war with a first-class naval Power; on the contrary, there had been unqualified apprehension on the mere rumour of war, especially among the naval members, arising from their consciousness of the inadequacy of the Fleet to meet the various duties it would be required to discharge in such an eventuality."
The fact was that after Trafalgar this country had attained to so supreme a dominance upon all seas, with so high a degree of sea-training acquired in independent commands, that organisation for war was taken for granted. We were living on the Nelson tradition. The change came with the advent of steam, which altered certain essential conditions of sea warfare. The use of steam involved a new organisation. Other nations recognised its necessity. We did not. Nor was it that the distinguished naval officers composing successive Boards of Admiralty neglected their duty, for organisation for war did not form part of their duty, as they conceived it. Moreover, they were wholly occupied with the vast labour of routine business, which developed upon them when the old Navy Board was abolished. The Navy Board, in the old wars, was charged with the provision of all matters of supply, leaving the Lords Commissioners free to conduct war.
That there existed no department charged with the duty of constantly representing what was required in ships, men, stores, docks, under peace conditions, or what would be required under war conditions, was obvious enough. But in the course of the execution of my duties as junior lord, it immediately became equally clear that the Navy was deficient in those very matters and things concerning which it would have been the business of such a department to report. Among them was coal, which was in my charge. Not only was there an immense deficiency in the war reserve of coal, but there was no plan for supplying it.
What my friends used to call my "craze," which they regarded as an amiable form of lunacy, for organisation for war, showed me that without it, all naval force, though it were twice as powerful, would be practically wasted in the event of emergency.
I went to the First Lord and asked him if it would be in order for me to draw up a memorandum on any subject to be laid before the Board. Lord George Hamilton, with his invariable courtesy, replied that any such paper would be gladly considered.
Within six weeks of my appointment to the Admiralty, I had drawn my Memorandum on War Organisation calling attention to the necessity of creating a Naval Intelligence Department at the Admiralty.
In that document, it was represented: