A System for the Conduct of War

I

ANY Government that hopes to wage war successfully and without undue cost must have established, before arms clash, a well-considered system of conducting war. Lincoln built up such a system under the stress of bitter experience. Davis, starting on his task with a far greater technical equipment than Lincoln possessed, never devised any effective system. It is commonly said by students of the history of the American Civil War that Lincoln was from the first seeking for a man, and that when he had found a man in Grant the rest was easy. Those who take this view are apt to quote Napoleon: ‘ In war men are nothing; it is the man who is everything. The general is the head, the whole of the army. It was not the Roman army that conquered Gaul, but Cæsar; it was not the Carthaginian army that made Rome tremble in her gates, but Hannibal.’

True enough of armies, but not the complete truth of modern nations at war. Sir William Robertson, who was the responsible adviser of a Government longer than any other soldier in the Great War, has said that the part of the effort of the British Empire for which he was responsible to the Cabinet was but 26 per cent of the whole. There must, then, be someone to direct that whole and to coördinate its parts. It is not sufficient for the statesmen to choose leaders for armies, navies, and air forces, and to say to them, ‘Now go and fight.’ I hope to show that that was not Lincoln’s attitude to Grant. There must be direction — and constant direction — of strategy, but if direction is not to become mischievous interference the director must know how to direct. Here is the main difficulty which democracy must overcome if it is to be successful in war. Ministers who owe their position to votes have in time of peace more than sufficient to occupy them in meeting the daily needs and demands of voters. But voters in the mass take an interest in preparation for war only spasmodically, when they are alarmed, and then only in the provision of men and material, never in the organization of a system for the conduct of war. Ministers are therefore under no pressure to prepare themselves for a danger which mercifully is exceptional.

On the outbreak of the Great War our fleet and our small army were as well prepared as we can reasonably expect to find them in another like case. The Committee of Imperial Defense had elaborated a War Book which set forth the emergency legislation needed, and the action required of every government department. All this stood well the test of experience. But no one had thought out the most important preparation of all — a system for the conduct of war. The Field Service Regulations, the soldier’s bible in war, did make in very general terms a brief statement of the respective functions of soldier and statesman in war, but I much doubt if they were read by any minister. So we entered upon the war with no system for its conduct, and had to pay the price of neglect, notably in the Dardanelles campaign. More than fifty years after Lincoln we had, like him, to rough out a system as the result of bitter experience and at the cost of vast expenditure of blood and treasure, and it may be questioned if in the end our system was as good as his.

It is this lack of system, as I have said, and not any defect in the British Constitution, which was the cause of the weakness deplored by Lord Salisbury. Von Moltke designed for the autocratic Government of Prussia a method of conducting war which had great merits, but had one vital defect. Democracy can, if it will, devise a better. Modern war demands, not Napoleon’s man, but a partnership between the statesman and his military commanders.

I use the term ‘military’ in its widest sense to include all armed forces. The statesman must be the senior partner, and if the partnership is to be effective its members must have confidence each in the other, must be sufficiently acquainted with the whole business to understand the needs and difficulties of each, and the senior partner must know when and how to leave his fellows to their tasks, how to direct without interference. It requires no great effort to achieve this knowledge. For the statesman it demands no technical study of the details of strategy or of tactics — indeed knowledge of this kind may be, in fact probably will be, positively harmful. But if the partnership is to be effective the statesman must have learned from the experience of others, as recorded in history, what are the essentials of a good system for conducting war, and, having learned that, must have such a system ready before the time comes to put it to the test. Further, if the partners are to work together, the system must be known to all. Only when that is so can the military partners study their functions and determine their conduct. If the junior partners are to do their business they must know on what principles and by what methods their senior will act.

The difficulties in the past have arisen mainly because of a misconception of what is meant by the conduct of war. This has generally been supposed to mean the direction of armies and navies, and has therefore been regarded as a matter to be left to soldiers and sailors. To-day at least we should be aware that it means the direction for a special purpose of the whole power and resources of the nation. This is clearly not a matter to be left to soldiers or sailors, nor would any responsible soldier or sailor desire it to be so left. But it is a matter which requires preparation and organization as complete and systematic as does the mobilization of armed forces. It is a form of preparation which has the outstanding merit of costing nothing but thought, and of conveying no menace to a possible foe. The only difficulty in the way of getting it set on foot is the difficulty of getting the voters, who supply to ministers the inducement to act, interested in the subject. It is curious that, while most young men who aspire to take a part in public life make some study of social problems and methods of removing the evils from which the community suffers in time of peace, few if any make a study of how to deal with the greatest evil of all — war.

First in importance comes the study of the means of preventing war, but until those means have been found so certainly as to make war impossible, then surely a study of the means of conducting war with the greatest success and with the least loss must come next. This is a study not without interest, for it brings one into touch with men acting in positions of great responsibility under great stress, and it is certainly a study of national importance.

‘The nation in arms’ is a term the meaning of which, before 1914, we had but vaguely conceived; we know now that it comprises much more than the men who bear arms. No democracy will consent to hand over to professional sailors, soldiers, and airmen the direction of the whole vast forces which comprise the power of a nation, as Ludendorff has more than once hinted, in his two books, that Germany should have done in the Great War. The instinct which forbids this is wise, for I do not believe that even Napoleon at his zenith could himself have controlled and directed the complex resources of a modern great Power, and at the same time have commanded its armies in the field.

II

It is, then, agreed that the conduct of war must be directed by statesmen, and it is equally agreed that one part of the conduct of war, the handling of armies and navies, must be left to professional experts. How are these two conditions to be fulfilled?

In time of peace statesmen have at their elbows experts to assist them in the work of the departments with which they are charged. It is the statesman’s business to inform his experts of the policy to which his Government is committed, and to explain to them his plans for giving effect to that policy. They have then to complete the details of such plans, to point out to the statesman difficulties in the way, and to suggest the best method of overcoming them. When, as sometimes happens, the statesman has no policy, it is the business of the expert to propose to him measures which his experience has told him are required. The statesman’s function is then to tell his adviser how far the public is prepared to accept such measures, whether the political situation is ripe for their introduction. Under such conditions the expert is the servant of the statesman and through him of the State. He is usually anonymous and is unknown to the general public. A Chancellor of the Exchequer is not expected to be an expert financier and economist any more than a civilian statesman is expected to be an expert strategist and tactician. He gets such advice and help as he thinks necessary from financiers and economists, and accepts or rejects as much of that advice as he thinks fit. He makes himself responsible for the final result which he himself presents through Parliament to the nation. Why are not similar methods possible in war? If the statesman is primarily responsible for the conduct of war, why should he not explain his policy and his plans to his soldiers and sailors and get them to prepare the details for him, modify those details himself as seems to him fit, and supervise the execution of the plan as finally prepared?

The reason why this method is not applicable to the conduct of war is that war is neither a science nor a business; it is an art. The economist or the financier can say to his Chancellor, ‘Do this, and such and such will be the consequences. You will gain or lose so much revenue.’ The Chancellor can check that opinion with a dozen others, and, if he is a judge of men, he knows what value to place on each. Neither soldiers nor sailors, if they know their business, will attempt to prophesy how they will act before they meet their enemy, nor will they foretell what the results will be. They know that in war there are few constants and an immense number of variants. Like the painter or the sculptor they should be guided automatically by the principles of their art, and should be so steeped in its technique that instinctively and without any conscious process of reasoning they apply the right stroke at the right time. Foch is fond of quoting the question which General Verdy du Vernois asked himself when, in the Austro-Prussian War of 1866, he approached the battlefield of Nachod. ‘Let history and principles go to the devil. After all, what is the problem?’ Which means that it is only the amateur who thinks of principles and technique when it is time to act, only the duffer at golf who murmurs to himself, ‘Slow back.’

Here, then, is one vitally important difference between the military experts and those other experts with whom statesmen are normally in contact. But there are others. The soldier or the sailor in command in war is never anonymous. He is a public figure, and the public regards him as directly responsible to it for the employment of the forces committed to his charge — forces in which serve the sons, brothers, sweethearts, and husbands of the nation. The statesman is apt to stress his responsibilities in time of war, and they are heavy, but those of the soldier and sailor are not less heavy. ‘Great results in war,’ says Foch, ‘are due to the commander. History is therefore right in making generals responsible for victories, in which case they are glorified, and for defeats, in which case they are disgraced.’ The expert in the government office does not win much glory, but he has little risk of disgrace.

The kind of expert the statesman has to use for the direction of armed forces in time of war is, then, very different from the kind of expert whom he uses in time of peace. The advice of the expert soldier and sailor cannot be treated like the advice of the expert financier, because it involves action which they alone can take. The statesman can present his budget, and he will rightly receive all the credit or blame for proposals which others may have prepared for him, because the responsibility for action is his, but he cannot lead armies and fleets against the foe, or be held responsible for the manœuvres of admirals and generals, though he may be called to account for his choice of commanders.

The military chief is, therefore, or should be, in a different relation to the statesman in time of war from that occupied by any of his assistants in time of peace. I have suggested that this relation should be of the nature of a partnership, in which the statesman becomes the senior partner. If that is so, then it is clearly necessary that the conditions of the partnership and the functions of the partners should be determined beforehand. This is the more necessary because, just as the process of mobilization places armies and fleets on a footing very different from that which obtains in peace, so war places government in a new position. But the process of mobilization is well known and its effect is studied beforehand — it is even occasionally practised in time of peace; but we have never, before we went into a war, considered what should be the machinery for its conduct, and those who had to use that machinery have never had an opportunity of examining the mechanism and of considering how it would work.

III

It is the practice in Great Britain and also in the United States — less invariably in other countries with a democratic system of government — to place civilian ministers in charge of the military departments. These ministers are responsible to Parliament—and through it to the country — for the whole of the administration of the services they direct. Few would, I think, dispute that the definite assertion of civilian control over military force is necessary and desirable. As regards the British army, that control has been established only after a protracted struggle between Crown and Parliament, which ended more recently than most people might imagine. It became finally effective only in 1895 when the Duke of Cambridge resigned his position as Commander-in-Chief.

Speaking from his place in the House of Commons, Mr. (now Lord) Balfour said: ‘ If the Secretary of State is to take official advice from the Commanderin-Chief alone, it is absolutely impossible that he should be really responsible; in this House he will be no more than the mouthpiece of the Commanderin-Chief.’ I have always suspected that it was largely for the purpose of removing the last possibility of this danger that Mr. Balfour, when he became Prime Minister, abolished the office of Commander-in-Chief and created an Army Council. Be that as it may, we have in peace time a civilian minister in complete control of thearmy, while Mr. Churchill has reminded us in The World Crisis that when he entered the Admiralty he found himself ‘ responsible to Crown and Parliament for all its business.’

I much doubt if Lord Balfour or any other stickler for the control of Parliament ever seriously intended that civilian ministers should prepare plans of campaign or direct the disposition of armies and navies in war. I am convinced that the great mass of voters took it for granted that such matters would be in the hands of military experts. Some reconsideration of the powers and functions of ministers when armies and navies are mobilized, some definite system for the conduct of war, should then have been prepared before war came upon us. As this was not done we find that naturally enough the ministers in control of the naval and military departments continued in the early part of the Great War to exercise the powers conferred on them for the purpose of administration in time of peace. Mr. Churchill tells us, for instance, that toward the end of July, when the crisis appeared to be imminent, he prepared a list of seventeen points to be attended to, an early presage of the part points were to play in the war and its settlement. These points included the dispositions of fleets from home waters to China. This was in no sense his business. All that it should have been necessary for him to do — and that he should have done when he entered the Admiralty in 1911, not when the crisis came — was to ask his naval advisers for their scheme of mobilization, and satisfy himself that it was complete. Mr. Churchill’s points, of which he gives us a facsimile, are evidence of his prescience and foresight, but the matters with which they deal are not such as should be left to the prescience and foresight of any individual, and least of all to the chance of having an energetic and forceful minister in office when war is imminent. I do not suggest that they were so left, but I do suggest that the fact that Mr. Churchill prepared this list and has proudly exhibited it to us is evidence of an absence of system and a confusion of functions, which had, before long, disastrous consequences.

When the preparations for the Dardanelles expedition were under discussion we find that Mr. Churchill’s naval advisers, grown accustomed to his domination, were in some uncertainty as to their powers and duties. They appear to have acquiesced in Lord Balfour’s opinion — which I have suggested had only to do with administration in peace time — that the civilian minister was not to be the mere mouthpiece of his experts, but was to express and be responsible for his own opinions, and also to have accepted Mr. Churchills view that he was ‘responsible to Crown and Parliament for all the business of the Admiralty.’ They did not conceive it to be their business to inform the War Council of the Cabinet where and why they differed from their civilian chief. The Royal Commission appointed to inquire into the Dardanelles campaign says regarding this: —

We also think that the naval advisers should have expressed their views to the Council, whether asked or not, if they considered that the project which the Council was about to adopt was impracticable from a naval point of view. . . . We are unable to concur in the view put forward by Lord Fisher that it was his duty, if he differed from the chief of his department, to keep silence at the Council or to resign. Wethink that the adoption of any such principle generally would impair the efficiency of the public service.

If Lord Balfour is right as to the functions of ministers in time of peace and the Royal Commissioners are right as to the functions of military experts in time of war, there is evidently a marked difference in the functions and duties of ministers and military experts in peace and war. In peace the soldiers and sailors have to accept the policy and the means provided for them by their political chiefs or resign. In war they become the advisers, not of their ministers, but of the supreme authority in the State, and the ministers must therefore automatically cease to be responsible for all the business of their departments. There would therefore appear to be as much need for mobilizing a system of government on the eve of war as for mobilizing armies and fleets.

That this is so becomes even more evident when we come to the administration of the War Office in the early days of the war. A great military administrator was appointed War Secretary, to the delight of the Daily Mail, which congratulated itself on appointing a man against whom it was previously leading a campaign of attack. When Lord Kitchener came into the War Office he was lacking in experience in the methods of the administration of government at home, as was Abraham Lincoln when he became President of the United States. His work had lain entirely outside Great Britain. He found no suggestions for a system of conducting war prepared for him and, being at once involved in the huge task of raising and equipping large armies, he had no time to give consideration to that vital matter. It is not true to say, as is sometimes said, that on the outbreak of war the General Staff at the War Office scrambled for places on the Headquarters Stall in France. I was not on either myself at the time, so I can speak freely. A definite plan for the mobilization of a headquarters in the field had been prepared as part of the systematic scheme of mobilization, and most of the appointments to that headquarters were provisionally made before the crisis came. But it is true that in preparing the otherwise admirable scheme for placing our little army on a war footing no thought had been given to the application of a similar measure either to the War Office in particular or to the Government as a whole.

Lord Kitchener, being a man of very strong character with a taste for centralization, in the absence of a considered system became not only Secretary of State for War, but also the chief military adviser of the Government, and to a great extent his own Chief of Staff. It is in most circumstances beyond human capacity to combine the functions of three offices, and Lord Kitchener, who alone had seen from the first the magnitude of the task which we had undertaken and was endeavoring to provide us with armies adequate for that task, could not possibly perform them in the circumstances of the autumn of 1914. But his military advisers were no more clear than were Mr. Churchill’s naval advisers as to their powers and duties, and in fact Lord Kitchener did act as their mouthpiece to the Government. The consequences of this state of affairs in both naval and military departments are described by the Royal Commission in its investigation of the genesis of the Dardanelles campaign: —

Mr. Churchill appears to have advocated the attack by ships alone before the War Council on a certain half-hearted and hesitating expert opinion, which favored a tentative or progressive scheme beginning with an attack on the outer forts. . . . There does not seem to have been direct support or direct opposition from the responsible naval and military advisers, Lord Fisher and Sir James Wolfe Murray, as to the practicability of carrying on the operations approved by the War Council, viz., to bombard and take the Gallipoli Peninsula with Constantinople as its objective. . . . It is impossible to read all the evidence, or to study the voluminous papers which have been submitted to us, without being struck with the atmosphere of vagueness and want of precision which seems to have characterized the proceedings of the War Council.

Vagueness and want of precision are the inevitable consequence of absence of system and of a clear understanding by all concerned in the conduct of war — statesmen, soldiers, and sailors — of their functions and powers. These functions and powers can only be exercised effectively when those called upon to wield them know what they are and have had opportunity of studying them at first hand. In what I have here said I do not wish to appear to be critical either of Lord Kitchener or of Mr. Churchill. We owe a debt of gratitude we can never repay to Lord Kitchener for foreseeing at once the length of the war, for taking the measure of the effort which we should be required to make, and for having faith in our power to create during the war a great national army, a faith which was shared by very few soldiers in 1914; to Mr. Churchill for the timely mobilization of our fleet and its dispatch to its war stations. We shall be hunting the wrong fox if we seek to attach to individuals the responsibilities which must be shared by statesmen, soldiers, and sailors, and indeed by all who have it in their power to form and guide public opinion. Having no system for the conduct of war, we were fortunate in having men of character and energy in the War Office and Admiralty.

IV

It was not until December 1915 that a definite system for the conduct of war was established in the War Office. It was created by Sir William Robertson, who, when he was offered the post of Chief of the Imperial General Staff at home, wrote to Lord Kitchener: —

1. There should be a supreme directing authority whose function is to formulate policy, to decide on the theatres in which military operations are to be conducted, and to determine the relative importance of those theatres. This authority must also exercise a general supervision over the conduct of the war, and must select the men who are to execute the policy on which it has decided. Its constitution must be such that it is able to come to quick decisions, and therefore as regards the conduct of the war it must be absolute. The War Council should be capable of performing the functions of this supreme authority, provided it is relieved of responsibility to the Cabinet as a whole as regards the conduct of military operations, and that it has real executive power, and is not merely an advisory committee.

The War Council will frequently find itself in a position similar to that of a commander in the field — that is, it will have to come to a decision when the situation is obscure, when information is deficient, and when the wishes and the powers of our Allies are uncertain. Whatever those difficulties may be, if and when a decision is required, it must be made. If it is deferred success cannot be expected, the commander concerned will have a grossly unfair burden placed upon him — in fact the absence of a decision may be little less than criminal, because of the loss of life which may be entailed.

2. In order that the War Council may be able to come to timely decisions on the questions with which it has to deal, it is essential that it should receive all advice on matters concerning military operations through one authoritative channel only. With us that channel must be the Chief of the Imperial General Staff. It is his function as regards military operations to present to the War Council his reasoned opinion as to the military effects of the policy which they propose, and as to the means of putting that approved policy into execution. The War Council is therefore to accept or reject the reasoned advice so offered.

Advice regarding military operations emanating from members of the Cabinet or of the War Council in their individual capacity, or from any other individual, should be sifted, examined, and presented, if necessary with reasoned conclusions, to the War Council by the Chief of the Imperial General Staff before it is accepted by the War Council.

3. All military operations required to put into execution the policy approved by the War Council should be issued and signed by the Chief of the Imperial General Staff, under the authority of the Secretary of State for War, not under that of the War Council. Similarly all communications from general officers commanding regarding military operations should be addressed to the Chief of the Imperial General Staff. In fact the same procedure is required in London as obtains in the field, the War Council being in the position of the commander of the whole of the Imperial Land Forces and, with the War Office Staff, constituting the Great General Headquarters of the Empire.

Then follow proposals for placing the organization of the War Office on a war footing.

There is in this document no suggestion of military domination. The War Council, which was to be ‘in the position of the commander of the whole of the Imperial Land Forces,’ comprised civilian ministers exclusively. What Sir William Robertson’s proposals did do was to define clearly the respective functions of ministers and soldiers in war, — to set forth the terms of the partnership, — and they made a drastic change in the peace-time functions of the ministers who had charge of the army and navy. They were no longer entirely responsible to Crown and Parliament for all the business of their departments.

The effect of these proposals was to bring about an immediate improvement in the business of conducting the war. One gentleman who had been during a long life in intimate touch with the management of public affairs told me a short time after the new system had been at work that he never remembered so remarkable a change from scurry and confusion to order and method. Such difficulties as subsequently arose were in part due to a clash of personalities, which no system can prevent, and in part due to the unwillingness of certain ministers to apply a system with which they were unfamiliar and which they did not entirely understand. That difficulty is avoidable if the system is prepared and known beforehand.

When Mr. Lloyd George became Prime Minister in December 1916, he improved the organization for the conduct of the war by abolishing the existing Cabinet with its War Council or Committee and substituting a small War Cabinet of five ministers.¹ ‘From a military standpoint,’ says Sir William Robertson, who had longer experience of the War Cabinet than any other soldier or sailor, ‘and leaving out of account the constitutional aspect of the question, — about which I express no opinion, — the change was welcome, if only for the reason that six men could be trusted to give a decision in less time than a score would, but my experience leads me to add that the War Cabinet did not by any means provide a complete remedy for the evils from which its predecessor had suffered. Most of its members were ministers without portfolios, and, having little if any firsthand knowledge of the questions with which they had to deal, were necessarily dependent upon those ministers who had it. Consequently the Secretary of State for War, the First Lord of the Admiralty, and the Foreign Secretary, none of whom was a member of the War Cabinet, usually had to attend once a day when meetings were held, while other ministers, such as the Secretary of State for India, the Shipping Controller, the Minister of Labor, the Minister of Air, and the Ministry of Munitions, had also frequently to be summoned. The result was that the total number present was often not much less than, and was sometimes more than, under the old system, and it is difficult to see how this could have been prevented; for, whether the heads of the various state departments do or do not permanently belong to the body charged with the supreme direction of a war, they must be called in when important questions concerning their departments are being considered. The fact is that in a great war such as that of 1914-18 the ramifications of the numerous problems which arise are so widespread that the rapid dispatch of business must always be exceedingly difficult to achieve.’ There was a further difficulty which Sir William Robertson does not mention. The War Cabinet naturally required the daily attendance at its meetings of its chief military and naval advisers. This took up a great deal of valuable time, and usually kept these high functionaries from their offices for the greater part of the morning.

V

Now Sir William Robertson’s system, established after fifteen months of the war, at a time when grievous experience showed that there was something vitally wrong with our methods of conducting war, was — save in one respect — very similar to that established by Abraham Lincoln in March 1864. Then Halleck became Lincoln’s Chief of Staff, and communicated the views of the administration in Washington to Grant, the commander in the field, and with Halleck Grant, save very exceptionally, corresponded. The one important difference was that Lincoln was his own War Cabinet. The Constitution of the United States permits this. Is there anything in our Constitution which prevents us from adopting a similar procedure? We have seen that the experience of war caused us to modify very materially the constitutional powers of the Secretary of State for War, and of the First Lord of the Admiralty, as they existed in peace and were used in the early days of the struggle. We have seen that Mr. Lloyd George formed a Cabinet of a kind strange to our constitutional practice. What is there to prevent us from going a step further?

The practice of Rome and of the United States should assure us that there is nothing undemocratic in establishing a temporary dictatorship in time of national emergency. We must, in a great war, have a supreme authority to direct all the armed forces of the Empire. That authority must be civil, and it is far better that it should be vested in a man than in a committee. That man with us must be the Prime Minister. I suggest that we should be well advised, whenever such a danger arises as calls for the mobilization of the whole of our forces, to place in the hands of the Prime Minister authority to nominate and remove his military advisers and the commanders of armies and fleets, and to conduct in consultation with these advisers the naval, military, and air operations of the war. The Order in Council, or other instrument which confers this power on the Prime Minister, should at the same time define exactly the powers and functions and responsibilities of his military advisers. The initial policy of the Government in the war, relations with friendly or neutral States, the raising and distribution of man power, the conservation and development of the resources of the State and the means of adding to them, the regulation of home affairs — all these are matters which can well be discussed in Cabinet or committee, but the whole history of war shows us plainly that a committee is not a suitable body to direct military operations.

It is more than two hundred years since the Duke of Marlborough expressed his opinion of War Cabinets. On August 2, 1705, he wrote to the Pensioner of Holland: —

I am very uneasy in my own mind to see how everything here is like to go notwithstanding the superiority and the goodness of our troops, which ought to make us not doubt of success. However, it is certain that, if affairs continue in the same policy they now are, it will be impossible to attempt anything considerable with advantage, since councils of war must be called upon every occasion, which entirely destroys the secrecy and dispatch upon which all great undertakings depend, and has unavoidably another very unhappy effect, for, the private animosities between so many persons as have to be assembled being so great, and their inclinations and interests so different as always to make one party oppose what the other advises, they consequently never agree.

I do not say this because I have the honor of being at the head of the army, but it is absolutely necessary that such power be lodged with the general as may enable him to act as he thinks proper, according to the best of his judgment, without being obliged ever to communicate what he intends further than he thinks convenient.

We may consider ourselves to be reasonably secure against private animosities of the kind that vexed Marlborough, but ‘the secrecy and dispatch upon which all great undertakings depend’ are more likely to be obtained if military advisers have to deal with one man instead of a committee. It is also far more likely that those relations of intimacy and mutual confidence which are one of the essential factors of success will be more successfully established if the military advisers are brought into direct contact with the Prime Minister than if they have to deal with a Cabinet, limited though it be in numbers.

There are few questions more difficult for those charged with the direction of armies and navies than that upon which Marlborough touches in the second paragraph of his letter: How much and how little of military plans should be disclosed to ministers? There are certain matters, as I have pointed out, upon which they have an undeniable right to information. They must be assured that the plans proposed are within the means of the nation; they must equally be assured that the vitals of the nation are to be sufficiently protected. They are entitled to receive every scrap of information about operations which are completed, that they may be able to judge of the capacity of their commanders; but the minister who seeks information beforehand as to when and how a battle will be fought, and what its result will be, is ignorant of his business. He should recall Lincoln’s interview with Grant. A committee is usually more inquisitive than an individual, and if the military advisers have to do with one minister instead of with half a dozen it will be the easier to hold the balance between the advantages of secrecy and the disadvantages of failing to satisfy that minister’s legitimate anxieties.

On all these grounds, then, I believe that the supreme directing authority over all the forces of the Empire in time of war should be one man, and that man the Prime Minister, just as in the United States of America the supreme authority is the President. We have of recent years taken one very satisfactory measure for the establishment of such a system of conducting war. In 1923 the Prime Minister appointed a committee to inquire into national and imperial defense. This committee recommended among other measures that ‘in addition to the functions of the Chiefs of the Staff as advisers on questions of sea, land, or air policy, respectively, to their own Board or Council, each of the three Chiefs of the Staff will have an individual and collective responsibility for advising on defense policy as a whole, the three constituting as it were a superchief of a War Staff in Commission. In carrying out this function they will meet together for the discussion of questions which affect their joint responsibilities.’

This is a great step forward in the coördination of the three services. Let us complete it by arranging for the coordination of policy and strategy. ‘A super-chief of a War Staff in Commission’ connotes yet another chief whom these three are to serve. Let that chief be created and let his functions be defined. If the conferring of so much power on one man be too much for our Constitutionalists to swallow, then let there be a War Cabinet as small as possible, and, just as soldiers and sailors know what their positions and functions will be on mobilization, and are prepared to step into them at a moment’s notice, let ministers also know theirs. There will then be some prospect that they will study their duties and be ready to learn something of what the history of war has to teach.