The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke, Volume 2

by Stephen Lucius Gwynn

"he had listened to the statement with something like dismay, for some of the changes made had been in his view entirely in the wrong direction…. There certainly had not been, during the many years he had been in the House, any debate in which the issues presented to the House had been so momentous…. To that portion of the Government's scheme which involved the position of the Duke of Devonshire in relation to Imperial defence he was fully favourable. He believed he was the original suggester of the proposal in 1888. What had been said by the Undersecretary went to suggest the creation of a Committee of the Cabinet only, which had been formed, they were told, by the late Government. If so, the matter was minimized, and there was less security given to the country than they had hoped. The first thing to be secured was that there should be the individual responsibility of one great member of the Cabinet rather than the collective responsibility of a considerable number.

"In regard to the reorganization of the War Office itself, he viewed with dismay the further explanations given to-day by the Under-Secretary. What had been the main objection to the past management of the army in this country? It had been that responsibility had been frittered away among a great number of different Boards…. He hoped that the new man chosen to be the head of the army would be in practice the real head of the army and the real adviser of the Secretary of State. What he feared they were doing was to create a copy of the Admiralty in those particular points in which the Admiralty itself had been the subject of criticism…. The Government, he contended, ought to recommend the one man, the Commander-in-Chief, and in the first instance take his opinion and regard him as ultimately responsible. Having picked out the most competent man, he hoped the Government would put the arrangement under that man and not under the civilian Secretary of State…. It was a mistake to give the Commander-in-Chief a department; he ought to be above the departments, and the departments ought to report to him. He had ventured for many years to ask in the first place that the Cabinet should consider the whole problem of Imperial defence, and in the second place that they should pick out the best man and trust him."

In reply to Dilke, Mr. Balfour said:

"If you put the Secretary of State for War in direct communication with the Commander-in-Chief alone, I do not see how the Secretary of State for War can be anything else than the administrative puppet of the great soldier who is at the head of the army. He may come down to the House and express the views of that great officer; but if he is to take official advice from the Commander-in-Chief alone, it is absolutely impossible that the Secretary of State should be really responsible, and in this House the Secretary of State will be no more than the mouthpiece of the Commander-in-Chief. It seems to me that the differences in this branch of the subject between the right hon. gentleman (Sir Charles Dilke) and the Government are of a more fundamental character than I anticipated."

The difference was indeed fundamental, for Dilke was thinking about war, and Mr. Balfour was thinking only of Ministerial responsibility. In case of a war in which the welfare, possibly the independence, of the nation would be at stake, what civilian Secretary of State would wish to be personally responsible for victory or defeat, or to be more than the mouthpiece of a great soldier at the head of the army?

The Commander-in-Chief had been a military officer whose function was to co-ordinate the work of the heads of the several military departments. The change made in 1895 transferred to the Secretary of State this duty previously performed by the Commander-in-Chief. Sir James Stephen's Commission had reported in 1887 that it was morally and physically impossible that any one man should satisfactorily discharge the functions which at that time belonged to the Secretary of State. To them in 1895 the Government added those of the Commander-in-Chief. The result was that in 1899 the Secretary of State failed to fulfil the most important of all his functions, that of maintaining accord between the policy of the Cabinet and the military preparations. The Committee of Defence, which was appointed in 1895, might perhaps have performed this essential function if it had ever taken a serious view of its work. But it in doubtful whether it ever did any work at all.

II.

In the new Parliament, Dilke moved on March 5th, 1896, for a return of the number of British seamen available for service in the navy in time of war.

"One difficulty," he said, "that had to be faced was that in debates like the present they had no real opportunity of engaging in a collective review of the whole defensive expenditure of the country on the army and navy taken together…. They expected from the Government a policy which could be explained to the House—either a policy of alliances, to which he himself was rootedly opposed; or the policy, which was the only true policy for this country, of keeping up such a fleet as would make us safe against any probable combination. The point to which he wished to draw most urgent attention was that the real reserve of England was disappearing very fast. The British sailor was becoming more and more a rare article of luxury. He was used on the first-class liners, and not used elsewhere…. There was another point of importance. Among these foreigners there were many masters of ships, and they were taught the pilotage of our rivers. That was a very serious matter, and might become a great danger in time of war."

It soon became evident that the changes made in 1895 had not produced improvement either in the Government's arrangements for national defence or in the management of the army. In November, 1896, Lord Lansdowne, Secretary of State for War, and Sir Michael Hicks Beach, Chancellor of the Exchequer, made speeches the same evening at Bristol. The Secretary of State expressed the intention to make a slight increase in the number of battalions in the army, while the Chancellor declared that he would consent to no increase in the Army Estimates until he could feel more confidence in the manner in which the money was expended. This disagreement between members of the Cabinet led to inquiries, through which Dilke became aware that the Commander-in-Chief, Lord Wolseley, wished for a larger increase in the number of battalions than the Secretary of State was willing to propose. The opportunity seemed suitable for raising the question whether or not the military measures proposed by the Government were those suggested by their military adviser—a fundamental question. Lord Lansdowne having explained in the House of Lords in February, 1897, that his proposal was to add two battalions to the Guards and one to the Cameron Highlanders, and that he hoped in this way to restore the equilibrium between the number of battalions at home and the number abroad, Dilke in the House of Commons pointed out (February 8th) that the measure proposed would not establish the desired equilibrium, and that the proposal was anonymous. Who, he asked, were the military authorities on whose advice the Government relied? Mr. Brodrick, in reply, said that the proposals of the Government, taken as a whole, had been gratefully accepted by one and all of the military heads of the War Office, as, in the words of the Commander-in-Chief, "such a step forward as has not been made for many years." Thus it became clear that the military heads, including the Commander-in-Chief, were as ready to be overruled in regard to their views as to what was necessary for the army as the civilian Minister was to overrule them.