THE COMMITTEE OF DEFENCE.
MR. BALFOUR'S announcement of the reorganisation of the Committee of Defence has met with a very large meed of approval in the Press. In many ways we agree with these expressions of approval; but.we think that there are also certain dangers connected with the creation of this new body which must not be lost sight of, and these we desire to state. We must first, however, deal with Mr. Balfour's account of the nature of the newly organised Committee. It is no longer a purely Cabinet Committee to which on certain occasions the counsels of military or naval experts will be called. It differs from all other Cabinet Committees in having certain officials permanently connected with it, and in having records kept of its proceed, ings. •" We have," says Mr. Balfour, "placed upon it not merely the President of the Council and the Prime Minister, the First Lord of the Admiralty and the Secretary of State for War—all members of the Cabinet—but we have added to them as permanent elements the Commander-in-Chid, the First Naval Lord, the Director of Military Intelligence, and the Director of Naval Intelligence; and in addition to that we have made arrangements by which permanent records can be kept of the conclusions at which we arrive, and of the reasons on which those conclusions are based." The results of its deliberations will be handed on to an in- coming Ministry, to whatever party it may belong ; so that the military policy of the country will have in it an element of continuity which it has never had hitherto. Owing to the existence of the Committee, various questions which the Empire presents " will no longer be considered by the War Office as distinguished from the Admiralty, by the Admiralty as distinguished from the War Office, and then fought out by correspondence between the two Departments, but they will be threshed out round the table by the most competent experts whose services we can command, associated with the most responsible Ministers belonging to the Cabinet." The decisions of the Com- mittee will not, however, bind the Cabinet. Their con- clusions will come before the Cabinet, who will have the fullest opportunity of acting upon them, or not acting upon them, as they choose ; but the deliberations of the Committee themselves, and their reasons for their action, will remain on record. " That, I hope and believe," said Mr. Balfour in conclusion, " is really a reform which violates no canon of our Constitution, a reform which is in absolute harmony both with Cabinet responsibility and with the responsi- bility of the Government in the House of Commons, and I trust that it will bear rich fruit in the future in connection with the ever-increasing gravity of the military and naval problems which this country has to face in all parts of the world."
If Mr. Balfour, and his successors, can keep the Com- mittee strictly within the bounds which he has laid down, then no doubt the Committee will not only do no harm, but should do great good. The former haphazard scheme, under which there was no real attempt to co-ordinate the duties and plans of the two fighting Services, or to bring them into harmony under the eye of the Prime Minister, was most dangerous and unbusinesslike. Under it the country ran great risks that a good deal of the ground would not be covered at all, and that the gravest decisions might be come to without consideration based on the fullest and freshest information. But it is not really necessary to dwell upon the advantages that will accrue from the formation of the Committee. They must be obvious to all men. What is not so obvious is the possible danger that if the Committee is not kept within strict bounds, but is permitted too large a development, the responsibility of the Prime Minister and the Cabinet may be seriously weakened. But if our present system of government is to produce sound results, the responsibility of the Prime Minister and the Cabinet to the nation for the efficient conduct of its affairs must never be allowed to be impaired even in the slightest degree. If it is, we may some day find that we have drifted into a most dangerous position. We must never forget that effectual responsibility is by no means the easiest thing in the world to maintain. It is, in truth, a gold piece that is very easily lost if it is allowed to be passed too easily from hand to hand. It may either disappear altogether in the process of passing through the hands of many people, or it may be worn so thin as to become practically, valueless. It is only really effective when it remains firmly held either by one band or else by a number of men, such as a Cabinet, who have constituted themselves a single unit,—an artificial person. It is, therefore, essential that the merely advisory character of the Committee of Defence should be strictly maintained, and that both in name and in fact the responsi- bility of the Prime Minister and his Cabinet should be jealously guarded. If once the public began to look on the Committee as a separate political entity, to ask what they were doing with this or that problem, and to try in any way to fasten responsibility on them, the responsibility of the Government must begin to be impaired. We shall never, we trust, see the day when it will be said by a Prime Minister, or by his friends and defenders, that after all it is not fair to blame him for this or that disaster. He referred the problem, as was his duty, to the Committee of Defence, and they decided it in a certain way, which, of course, he was bound to follow, though personally he did not approve of their decision.' If once such an attitude is accepted, or not repudiated in the strongest possible way, we shall in- fallibly lose the gold piece as it passes from hand to band and backwards and forwards between the Government and the Committee. For this reason we hope that we shall in future hear very little about the doings of the Committee either in the Press or in Parliament. It must remain a purely business body, with which the outside public has no more concern than with any ordinary Committee of the Cabinet.
We must still, that is, look to the Government for results, and judge by results, and never allow ourselves to be put off by explanations as to the beauty and appropriateness of the machinery of government. A badly cooked dinner is never excused because of the marvellous cleverness and efficiency of the range on which it is cooked. We judge by the dinner. So the public, while it allows, nay, en- courages, the Government to establish the best possible machinery, must never permit itself to be deflected from the consideration of results by admiration for mere machinery.
Two points—one concerned with the composition of the Committee, and the other with the information supplied to it—appear to us deserving of notice. We hold that except when the Prime Minister is also Chancellor of the Exchequer—as we should like to see him—the Chancellor of the Exchequer should be a member of the Committee instead of the President of the Council. We know that at the moment it is popular with military and naval experts and enthusiasts to flout the Treasury view, but to us it has always seemed that a sound financial system is a most important item in national defence. We would not starve the Army, and still less the Navy, in order to have low Estimates ; but we hold that no final recom- mendations can be made to the Cabinet by the Committee unless and until they have been considered from the Trea- sury point of view. And we do not want them considered in isolation by the Treasury, but to have the Treasury view co-ordinated with the views of the Navy and Army. Our other criticism is this. We think that some arrangement should be made by which intelligence should be supplied by the Foreign Office direct to the Committee. We are aware, of course, that information which is presumed to concern the Naval and Military Intelligence Departments is sent to them from the Foreign Office ; but when such information is political rather than technical it is possible that it may be overlooked in those Department's. That being so, we think that the Foreign Secretary himself should furnish the Committee of Defence with Reports embodying any intelligence of first import- ance concerned with problems of defence which have been received by his Department. The Committee, indeed, should be a point on which information of all kinds con- cerned with the problems of national defence should focus.
One more warning and we have done. We hope that in case of war the Government in power will sternly resist the temptation to entrust the direction of the war to the Committee. An Aulic Council has always proved the worst body in the world to wage war. We do not by any means desire that the direction should be left solely to the generals on the spot ; but when it is advisable to exercise control from home, let that control be placed in the hands of one man, whether Prime Minister, or Secretary of. State for War, or First Lord of the Admiralty. A Committee may prepare for war, but it seldom wages it successfully.
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