TOPICS OF THE DAY
A MINISTRY OF DEFENCE AND THE TRUE WAY OF ECONOMY
ONE of the most notable of recent Parliamentary movements is the growth of the demand for a Ministry of Defence. This is due partly to the able and industrious group of Service members in the House of Commons, and partly, and perhaps chiefly, to the deepening conviction that as, demonstrably, there will not be much saving on civil expenditure there must be real saving upon the Fighting Services. A Ministry of Defence is the logical means of co-ordinating the Admiralty, the War Office and the Air Ministry. It would prevent overlapping and would at long last make expenditure dependent upon policy.
If we lived in a perfect world we should say, " Let us have a Ministry of Defence at once. We shall never have the fullest possible economy without it." But unfortunately we know from experience that a funda- mental change of this kind needs a great deal of building up. It is contrary to the genius of the British nation to rush at a problem and settle it in a frenzy. It is essential, however, that something should be done quickly by way of a start, and we welcome the proposal of General Sir John Davidson that a Royal CoMmission shoUld inquire into the whole subject.
We do not get anything resembling economy now and the tragedy is that under the present system nobody can be greatly blamed. Each Department is only doing its duty according to its lights to make the nation safe. The First Lord of the Admiralty, for in:stance, does not know, owing to the absence of co-ordination, what amount of co-operation he may expect from the Air Ministry and the Army. He therefore places his estimate of the minimum expenditure necessary for safety extremely high. In the circumstances he is quite right. Why should he be expected to accept the odium which would certainly be attached to him if a crisis suddenly occurred and it was found that he had " let the country down " ? - The same argument applies to both the other Services. Although we have Stated the case for co-ordination, and ultimately for a Ministry of Defence, from the point of view of economy, it is, of course, obvious that no system would really be economical that did not give us adequate defence. The business of a Ministry of Defence - is to provide defence. It is for real defence as well as for economy that the boldest thinkers in the Services are now asking for a co-ordinating Ministry.
In 1928 a specially appointed Sub-Committee of the Committee of Imperial Defence was appointed to inquire into possible schemes of co-ordination, and it reported definitely that it was undesirable and impracticable to supersede the Ministerial heads of the three Fighting Services by making them subordinates of a Ministry of Defence, and that it was equally impracticable to amalgamate the three Service Departments. Sir Frederick Maurice, in an article in the Daily News of March 24th, pointed out that the schemes laid before this Sub- Committee had not been fully thought out and that any Committee would have come to much the same et:nclusion on the evidence. - Later in 1923 another Sub-Committee was appointed. It recommended that the Chiefs of Staff of the Navy, Army and Air Forces should have an individual and collective responsibility for advising on defence policy as a whole. This recom- mendation was adopted and the three Chiefs have been regularly meeting since 1923 and acting, so to speak, as a Super,Chief of a War Staff in commission. This is something, but, of course, it is not nearly enough. No doubt the three Chiefs have done their very best at co-ordination, but it is impossible for them to gO very far without knowing what policy they are supposed to serve. In pre-War Germany it :would have been laid down that the policy must be the policy a the General Staff. In this country, which is definitely anti-militaristic, such an idea would not be tolerated. Policy must come from the civil head—from the Prime Minister.
Sir Frederick Maurice, and we agree with him, has said that the first step should be to reproduce and adapt the principle of the War Cabinet, which with the Prime Minister at its head controlled and directed policy. In another war the Prime Minister would control the war policy ; he should equally control the policy of the Fighting Services in peace. But it may be said that the Prime Minister has not enough time for this heavy task. That is no doubt true. He might, therefore, have as his immediate assistant a Minister with no other functions ; or if it were not desired to create a new office the Minister, as Sir Frederick Maurice suggests, might be the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster who at present has not a full-time job.
We are now spending £117,000,000 a year on the Fighting Services ; yet in the House of Commons it is out of order to discuss the estimates of the three Services in relation to one another. Each set of estimates has to be considered in a water-tight compartment. Js it not almost a certainty that if the responsibility which now rests with so heavy a weight upon each individual Department were shared under a carefully thought out system of co-ordination, the Navy and the Army would both find that much of their Imperial policing could be done by the Air Force ? In his recent series of "articles in the Spectator, Mr. John Buchan gave some striking examples of the speed and economy of those air cam- pa- igns which have taken the place ' of "old-fashioned frontier expeditions. Properly considered the 'Air Force need not be a new burden or a new complication, but may actually turn out to be a means of sunplification and economy.
We cannot go on for another year in the present way. One -channel of ecOnomy after another is bloeked. Here is one which is open. It must be used. - Efficiency as well as economy requires it.
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