IX LORD RANDOLPH CHURCHILL’S MEMORANDUM ON ARMY AND NAVY ADMINISTRATION

Included in the Report of Lord Hartington’s Commission, March 21, 1890.

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.

[A close parallel with the suggestion set forth above may be found in the position on the Council of the Indian Viceroy of the Indian Commander-in-Chief.]

For the purpose of bringing these Ministers into immediate contact with Parliament and at the same time of keeping them free from being involved in daily party debates and divisions, I advocate that they should be created members of the House of Lords.

[The feasibility of this suggestion is, I think, to a large extent illustrated by the positions now held in the House of Lords by his Royal Highness the Duke of Cambridge and Lord Wolseley. Possibly also in former days similar positions were to some extent maintained, without inconvenience, by the Duke of Wellington and Lord Hardinge.]

These two Ministers would each of them be assisted by (among other officers) (1) a chief of the staff whose duties will be sketched below, and (2) a financial secretary, with a seat in the House of Commons, whose duty it would be to explain and, if necessary, to defend in that assembly naval or military administration in detail.

III. For the purpose of (1) preserving and insuring the financial control of Parliament and of the Government, of (2) supplying the much-needed link between the two services, so that one great object—viz., Imperial defence—should be more completely attained, I propose that there should be created the office of Secretary of State and Treasurer for the Sea and Land Forces of the Crown.

This Minister would, according to my view, settle with the responsible heads of the services the amount of annual expenditure to be submitted to the Cabinet; he would be charged with the duty of auditing the accounts of the Admiralty and the War Office, with presenting to and defending in Parliament those estimates and that expenditure. He would be charged, further, with a third great duty—viz., with the control, management of, and responsibility for, the Ordnance Department, and with the making of the great contracts for the Army and the Navy. He would, as it were, set up and carry on a great shop from which the military and naval heads would procure most of the supplies which they needed.

The main outlines of expenditure having been agreed upon by the two professional Ministers in conjunction with the proposed Secretary of State, this latter would not interfere nor necessarily be held responsible for the administration of the services, excepting in so far as he might have undertaken to provide those services with ordnance and other supplies and in so far as his duty lay in auditing the accounts and in testing the stores in hand.

The Secretary of State as proposed would be assisted by (1) a Permanent Under-Secretary of State, (2) a Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, (3) an Accountant and Auditor-General, (4) a Controller of Ordnance and Supplies, under whom would be (a) the Head of the Ordnance Factories, (b) the Director of Contracts.

The control and interference now exercised by the Treasury over Army and Navy expenditure would, under the proposed scheme, cease and determine. So also would the audit of the Controller or Auditor-General. I suggest that the Secretary of State, or his Accountant and Auditor-General would personally explain to Parliament and to the Committee of Public Account, Army and Navy Expenditure.

The relations between the proposed Ministers for the Army and Navy on one hand, and the Government on the other, would be closely analogous to the well-understood relations which now exist between the Home Government and the Viceroy of India or the Ambassador at a Foreign Court or a Colonial Governor. The Ministers for the Army and Navy might be dismissed by a new Government coming into office, but such a dismissal would be a grave Ministerial action requiring defence and explanation in Parliament.

The relations between the Ministers for the Army and Navy and the Secretary of State for the Sea and Land Forces of the Crown would be those of perfect equality and constant communication. The heads of the Army and Navy would bring to the Secretary of State in very authoritative form the views of their respective professions. The Secretary of State would bring to the heads of the Army and Navy the views of the Government and the House of Commons on the political circumstances of the time. The three would examine in concert the general requirements of Imperial defence from a point of view embracing and balancing one against another all the exigencies or supposed exigencies of the services. Where the claims or the views of the Army and Navy might conflict, the Secretary of State would probably be found an authoritative and acceptable arbitrator. In the event of the Ministers for the Army and Navy disagreeing, either singly or jointly, with the Secretary of State, recourse would be had to the Cabinet. In the event of the Cabinet supporting the Secretary of State against the Ministers of the Army and Navy, either singly or jointly, those Ministers would have to consider whether their professional responsibility or reputation would admit of their continuing to hold office. In the event of the resignation of either or of both, Parliamentary discussion must ensue, and a Parliamentary decision must be taken. In the event of the administration of the heads of the Army and Navy being questioned by Parliament, the Secretary of State first, and the Government as a whole next, would have to consider whether they could or could not support in Parliament the administrative action arraigned. In either case, Parliamentary discussion and decision follow. Under the arrangements suggested above in almost every conceivable circumstance, I submit that not only in a very large measure (possibly as great as is practicable) is direct personal responsibility actually established, but also that the control of Parliament, far from being diminished, is considerably increased and made much more effective. The suggestions set forth above are, while probably open to much objection and criticism, also probably capable of much improvement and development, and in arriving at a judgment upon them, the Commissioners should bear in mind that the evidence before us discloses in many particulars a state of things more seriously unsatisfactory and possibly more pregnant with danger than Parliament or the public imagine; and the admitted defects of the present system of administration ought to be balanced by the Commissioners against the suggested defects of proposals for reform.