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

by Stephen Lucius Gwynn

V.

On June 20th, 1902, Lord Charles Beresford had raised the question of the organization of the Admiralty, which he held to be defective for the purpose of preparation for war. "The administrative faculty," he said, "should be absolutely separate from the executive faculty, but at present they were mixed up." Campbell-Bannerman held that no change was necessary. Dilke supported Lord Charles Beresford, and after reviewing the cordite debates of 1895, to which both the previous speakers had referred, gave his reasons for holding that the duty of the Cabinet was to control both services in order to secure that each should take its proper share in defence. "If there was a very strong man, or even one who thought himself very strong, at the head of either department, the present system tended to break down, because, unless there was some joint authority in the Cabinet strong enough to control even a strong First Lord of the Admiralty, no joint consideration of the views of the two departments could be obtained. At the present moment the two services competed." Lord Charles Beresford and Dilke were supported by Sir John Colomb, and in his reply Arnold-Forster said: "I cannot but reaffirm the belief I held before I stood at this table, and since I have stood here, that there is a need for some reinforcement of the intellectual equipment which directs or ought to direct the enormous forces of our Empire." The question was raised again on August 6th by Major Seely, in a speech in which he commented on the lack of a body charged with the duty of studying strategical questions. Mr. Balfour thereupon said:

"We cannot leave this matter to one department or two departments acting separately. It is a joint matter; it must be a joint matter. I hope my honourable friend will take it from me that the Government are fully alive, and have, if I may say so, long been fully alive, to the difficulty of the problem which presents itself to his mind and which he has explained to the House; and that that problem is one always present to our minds. It is one which we certainly do not mean to neglect to meet and grapple with to the best of our ability."

In 1903, in an article contributed to the Northern Newspaper Syndicate,
Dilke wrote:

"We are face to face with the fact that Mr. Brodrick's scheme is admitted from all sides, except by those actually responsible for it who are still holding office, to be a failure; that under this scheme the charge on the British Empire for defence in time of peace stands at eighty-six millions sterling, of which fifty-two millions at least are for land defence, nevertheless ill secured; that without a complete change of system these gigantic figures must rapidly increase; and that, while all agree that in our case the navy ought to be predominant, no one seems to be able to control the War Office, or to limit the expenditure upon land defence as contrasted with naval preparations. The service members of the House of Commons, who used to be charged with wasting their own and the nation's time upon military details, or upon proposals for increase of expenditure, have shown their patriotism and their intelligence by going to the root of this great question. They brought about the declaration of the Secretary of the Admiralty, Mr. Arnold-Forster, on June 20th, 1902, and the complete acceptance of that declaration by the Prime Minister on August 6th. They have now forced on Parliament and on the Prime Minister the necessity of taking real action upon his declaration that 'the problem of Imperial defence cannot be left to one department or two departments acting separately.' The utilization of the resources of the British Empire for war must be the business of the Prime Minister, who is above the War Office and the Admiralty, and who alone can lead the Cabinet to co-ordinate the efforts of the two services."

In October, 1903, Arnold-Forster was appointed to succeed Mr. Brodrick as Secretary of State for War. He had previously expressed, in conversation, his wish to see the whole subject of Imperial defence entrusted to a Committee of three men conversant with it, and had named Sir Charles Dilke and Sir John Colomb as two of the three whom he would choose if he had the power. In November a Committee of three was appointed by Mr. Balfour to report on the organization of the War Office. Its members were Lord Esher, Admiral Sir John (now Lord) Fisher, and Sir George Sydenham Clarke (now Lord Sydenham). The first instalment of this Committee's report, published on February 1st, 1904, proposed the reconstitution of the War Office on the model of the Board of Admiralty, and as a preliminary the dismissal of the Commander-in-Chief and the heads of the great departments at the War Office.

At the same time the Cabinet Committee of Defence was reconstituted under the presidency of the Prime Minister (Mr. Balfour). Thus at length, eleven years after Sir Charles Dilke's first conversations with Mr. Balfour on the subject, was adopted the suggestion he had urged for so many years, and so fully explained in his speech of March 16th, 1894, that a Prime Minister should undertake to consider the needs both of the army and navy, and the probable functions of both in war.

VI.

The result was very soon manifest in a complete change of policy, which was no doubt facilitated by the presence in the Cabinet, as Secretary of State for War, of Mr. Arnold-Forster, one of the signatories of the joint letter of 1894.

On March 28th, 1905, Arnold-Forster said: