“In England. Administrative and training organisation are under a senior officer, located 130 miles from the War Office, with a junior Staff Officer (Staff-Captain) in London to deal with the five branches above mentioned.
“The system is working now because Headquarters in France have been free from the questions of operations for most of the last six weeks, and have, therefore, been in a position to deal imperfectly and at a distance with the larger aspects of the whole matter.
“This will not be possible when operations become a more pressing obligation, as they are now doing.
“Then, this duty must devolve either on the five War Office branches, not one of which, I submit with all respect, can have any comprehensive grip of the subject, or on the G.O.C., Administrative Centre, who is out of continued personal touch either with the War Office or the requirements in this country, and is, moreover, debarred by his charter from really having any control or direction except at the instance of his Junior.
“In actual fact, the Director-General of Mechanical Warfare Supply, an official of the Ministry of Munitions, at the head of a very energetic body, becomes the head of the whole organisation. This officer, owing to his lack of military knowledge, requires and desires guidance, which none of the five departments at the War Office can, and which the G.O.C., Administrative Centre, is not in a position to, give him.
“In effect the tail in France is trying to wag a very distant and headless dog in England. We have had one check already in the matter of the increased weight of Mark IV. which it is possible may have serious results as regards transportation.
“In view of the inevitable expansion and great possibilities of this arm of the Service, I wish to urge most strongly that a Directorate (however small to begin with) be formed at the War Office on the lines of the Directorate of Aeronautics. Its functions to be to study possibilities of development, to watch design and supply, to co-ordinate training and administer the Corps as a whole. The officer in charge to be a senior officer, free to travel and empowered to issue definite instructions and decisions as to requirements to the Ministry of Munitions.”
As a result of this remonstrance, General Capper was appointed to the War Office, and the first Tank Committee was set up in the following May.
This Committee was commissioned “to systematise and strengthen liaison between the Army and the Ministry of Munitions.”
But when we consider the list of its members we do not find a single representative of the still drooping “tail.”[18]