The Royal Commission desires, I apprehend, to recommend to her Majesty’s Ministers a system of government and management for the Army and the Navy which shall appear to secure the maximum of efficiency which can be reasonably expected from normal expenditure on those services. By the consent of all, under present arrangements, this maximum has not been attained.
The present system of administration of the services may be said to date, for the Army, from 1855, and for the Navy from some twenty-five years earlier. A Prime Minister forming a government allots to the different offices members of Parliament of prominence and supposed capacity. Thus it invariably happens that gentlemen are appointed to exercise supreme control over the Army and Navy who possess no experience or knowledge of the military or naval service and profession. They are expected to decide general and technical questions of naval and military policy, they are supposed to be held responsible for the consequences of their decisions, and after a tenure of office, sometimes of several months, sometimes of a few years, they are succeeded by other gentlemen who take their places, provided with a similar lack of experience and knowledge. The duties which these two Ministers are expected to discharge involve scientific and economical provision for the defensive and offensive power of an Empire whose possessions are scattered all over the world and whose subjects number over three hundred million souls.
It can hardly be a matter for surprise that such a system has not altogether approximated to a satisfactory standard of combined efficiency and economy. Governments and Parliaments have been untiring in their pursuit after reform, but have as yet only succeeded in progressively increasing public dissatisfaction and, simultaneously, burdens on the taxpayer. The question seems to present itself whether the time has not arrived for considering seriously and without prejudice the expediency of a very radical change in our system of naval and military administration. The object aimed at is the maximum of efficiency consistent with the amount of expenditure which the taxpayer or his representatives will tolerate. Can any practical amount of efficiency of administration be obtained without professional training and knowledge? Can it be obtained without direct personal responsibility? Can direct personal responsibility be reasonably expected without professional control? The answer to these questions, I submit, is obviously in the negative. Professional reputation to a soldier or a sailor is everything next to life itself and the loss of it equals professional ruin, entailing pecuniary and social loss of a heavy character. To the ordinary politician under our political system administrative miscarriage brings little or no evil consequences. His fate, if unfortunate or unskilful, is in the vast majority of cases to be transferred to some other office—to a foreign embassy, to a colonial governorship or, at the worst, to the House of Lords. Neither pecuniary nor social loss necessarily or ordinarily follows the unskilful and possibly the disastrous administration of our Ministers for the Army and Navy. More than this, the professional persons who advise respectively the Secretary of State for War and the first Lord of the Admiralty escape all risk of public censure, sheltered as they are by the fictitious responsibility of the civilian Minister. History and theory will be found to coincide, in support of the recital set forth above.
Parliament is made the scapegoat for defective administration. The control of Parliament, the interference of Parliament, the jealousy of Parliament for its rights and privileges, these are the stock arguments in favour of an adherence to the main lines of our present system of naval and military administration.
Personally, and speaking with some experience of the House of Commons and after several years’ close study of the House of Commons, I put aside arguments of that kind. I have arrived at the conclusion that, eliminating great party issues, the House of Commons, with respect to the transaction of ordinary public affairs, is an assembly mainly composed of businesslike and reasonable individuals who, having to find certain funds for certain purposes, desire, in the main, that the pecuniary demands of Government should not be obviously excessive and that fair guarantees should be given for economical expenditure of the funds provided.
With these views I advocate, as an improvement on present arrangements, that the administration of the Navy and the Army should be entrusted respectively to members of those professions. That naval training, naval experience and naval eminence should be the qualifications of our Minister of Marine. That military training, military experience and military eminence should be the qualifications for our Minister for the Army. Superficially, at any rate, this suggestion would seem to be reasonable and not out of accord with ordinary common sense. It may, however, be met with the objection that it is unsuited to our constitutional arrangements and incompatible with Parliamentary control. I doubt whether this objection will sustain vigorous examination. Parliament has to provide annually a certain number of millions sterling for the purposes of Imperial defence, and while Parliament is always willing and anxious, sometimes even over-anxious, to recognise and reward the public service of an individual, if at the same time under my proposed reform Parliament is enabled, without much difficulty, to do what it cannot do now and what it never has been able to do—namely, to detect and punish the maladministration of an individual—Parliament would probably be satisfied.
To this end I suggest that the offices actually in existence of Secretary of State for War and of the Board of Admiralty be abolished. In their place I propose that there should be created three new offices—
I. A Commander-in-Chief or Lord High Admiral of the Navy, having, subject to the Government, supreme control over and responsibility for naval administration. Naval training, naval experience and naval eminence being the qualification for this office.
II. A Commander-in-Chief or Captain-General of the Army, having, subject to the Government, supreme control over and responsibility for the administration of the Army. Military training, military experience and military eminence being the qualification for this office.
For the purpose of securing continuity of administration, and also of providing from time to time for fresh administrative energy, I propose that these two offices should be appointments tenable for five years; also for the purpose of gaining for the Cabinet military and naval opinion at first hand, I recommend that the holders of these offices should be created privy councillors and should be summoned to all Cabinet Councils when military and naval questions are under consideration, with, while those naval and military questions are under consideration, an equal position with the other Cabinet Ministers. But in order to keep the administration of the services free from party politics I suggest that these two Ministers should take no part in the discussion or decision of any questions other than those connected with naval and military affairs.