TOPICS OF THE DAY.
THE MESOPOTAMIAN REPORT. THE Mesopotamian Report, which is intensely painful if salutary reading, shows in the event the great strength as well as the glaring weakness of British adminis- trators. For when we have mastered the complicated record of divided control, blind ignorance, pig-headed haughtiness, and their sequel of such a tale of human suffering as has seldom been equalled even in distant campaigns, we have to reflect that the conditions described have been absolutely swept away so far as the Mesopotamian campaign is con- cerned. The appallingly defective medical service has given place to ample and scientific arrangements ; the War Office with firmness and success has taken the control of the Mesopotamian expedition out of the faltering hands of the Government of India ; not one of those officers or officials who are censured in any serious degree for the early catas- trophes of the campaign remains to repeat his failure on the spot. We Englishmen are slow starters, but we improve as we go on, and we end generally with more dash than our opponents. We say this, not in any way in mitigation of judgment, or in condonation of the dangerous doctrine of " muddling through," but simply to point out that, as the Mesopotamian Report refers to a past order of things in the field, there is no need or excuse now for that sort of public recrimination which would impede the conduct of the war. There must be no exhausting digressions. The publication of the Report at this time will be justified in the exact degree in which it enables us to avoid the mistakes it discloses. For our part, we think the public may be trusted to use it wisely. In that belief we welcome it. It is written with high courage and an obvious desire to be impartial. It is a singularly honest piece of work.
If we ourselves had written the conclusions, we should have been inclined to lay proportionately more blame on the utterly mistaken system of military administration in India --which dates back to 1905—than on individual officers. At the same time, we do not detect in the tone of the Report the least desire to save one group of persons by making scapegoats of another group. That familiar offence—it would be a peculiarly odious offence in time of war—is absent here. The distribution of blame serves no prejudices. It may be said that in war the individual should always be blamed more than the system, for in war no man is fit for a responsible position unless he can rise above the circumstances of his time and place. But there are some systems of administration which would thwart the efforts of the very ablest brains, and if the man nominally in supreme command of the system has found that it is his master and not his servant, he is apt to reconcile himself to confusion and impotence. We take the military administrative system in India, as it has been since 1905, to be of that kind. No single man could do all that is required of the Commander-in-Chief under that system. It is one of the most complete designs of over- centralization ever invented. We can well believe that many soldiers could have done far better than Sir Beauchamp Duff. His achievement was a lamentably poor one, but we shall not learn the lessons best worth learning if we fail to look to the origins of error in the zest of hunting individuals. It will be remembered that in 1905 Lord Kitchener, who was then Commander-in-Chief in India, desired that the duties of the Military Member of the Council should be merged in those of the Commander-in-Chief. Lord Curzon, who was Viceroy, resisted, pointing out that an excessive burden would be placed on the Commander-in-Chief, and above all arguing that the military element would become predominant. The Commander-in-Chief would be inde- pendent ; the link between his office and the Viceroy's Council would be broken ; the ancient balance would be upset. To take an analogy, Lord Kitchener's proposal was as though a Commander-in-Chief here should propose the abolition of the office of Secretary for War—the civilian official responsible to Parliament for the interpretation and presentation of military affairs to the nation. The significance of the dispute between Lord Curzon and Lord Kitchener was not generally under- stood here. The Government of the day chose to support Lord Kitchener, who had all the repute of a brilliant soldier engaged on a great act of military reform, and Lord Curzon resigned. One of the important deductions to be made from the Mesopotamian Report is that even purely military ends are not served by making soldiers independent of control and responsible for excessive burdens. The balances of democratic or quasi-democratic administrations are very wise and sane. You cannot upset them without injuring the very causes you may wish to advance. Implicit in the Meso- potamian Report is a very remarkable vindication of the attitude which Lord Curzon took up in 1905. Writing on September 2nd, 1905, we said of Lord Kitchener's scheme :— " It is a most serious change, a revolution in truth, and one which we do not hesitate to say ought not to have been made without the previous consent of Parliament. . . . The Government did not understand the character of the far-reaching change they were approving. But the absence of insight in rulers as to the effect of their orders is of all causes that which most certainly enfeebles Empires, and destroys confidence in the ability of those rulers to govern."
Only by a surprising power of administrative recovery, and above all by the efforts of gallant soldiers in the field, has the cause that enfeebles Empires proved to be much less injurious than it seemed at one time likely to be. But it must not be forgotten that what we have called a power of recovery was really the bold substitution of War Office control for Indian control. The Indian system remains to be com- pletely overhauled.
To turn from the origins of error in the past to more recent origins, we find a very bad division of control between the India Office, which was responsible for the " policy " of the Mesopotamian campaign, and the Government of India, who were responsible for the " management." The authorities here were apparently more enthusiastic than those in India, but the latter were appointed the active agents. From the heights of Simla they presided over the Mesopotamian cam- paign ; they not only did not visit Mesopotamia, they did not even visit Bombay, which was the true base of the oper- ations. They behaved as though they were ignorant of the peculiar difficulties of navigation in the Tigris—and therefore of the necessity of supplying suitable vessels as soon as possible—and indeed as though they thought that a force could somehow be maintained far up the river without a special fleet of supply vessels at all. Both here and in India the civilian authorities were badly misled by their military advisers. But we may take the chief points in order. Sir John Nixon, after establishing control of Lower Mesopotamia, submitted a plan for advancing on Baghdad. General Townshend in trying to carry out this scheme protested to Sir John Nixon against being asked to reach Baghdad with a seriously inadequate force ; but Sir John Nixon's " confident optimism " convinced the Cabinet, who were admittedly ruled largely by a political consideration—the desirability of a striking success in order to counteract the presumed bad effect on the Moslem world of our failure at the Dardanelles. The Report says that the advance on Baghdad, as undertaken by General Townshend, was " an offensive movement based upon political and military miscalculations and attempted with tired and insufficient forces and inadequate preparation." Responsibility is apportioned in the following order :- Sir John Nixon, " whose confident optimism was the main cause of the decision to advance "' Lord Hardinge, the Viceroy ; Sir Beauchamp Duff, the Commander-in-Chief in India ; Sir Edmund Barrow, Military Secretary to the India Office ; Mr. Austen Chamberlain, the Secretary of State for India ; and the War Committee of the Cabinet. All the evidence laid before the Commission slowed that the expe- dition was very badly equipped. The shortage of transport was fatal. " The want of foresight and provision for the most fundamental needs of the expedition reflects discredit upon the organizing aptitude of all the authorities."- As for the medical arrangements, which broke down worse than those in the Crimean War, the Report adopts the findings of the Vincent-Bingley Commission, which inquired into the details on the spot. From a very early stage the sick and wounded underwent great suffering. This increased after Ctesiphon, and culminated during the Kut relief operations, when there was a complete breakdown. Surgeon-General Babtie, Director of Medical Services in India, and Surgeon-General Hathaway arc specially blamed. The Commission censure the attempts to conceal the medical deficiencies. A most harrowing description by Major Carter of the withdrawal of the wounded by river to Basra is given, but the official report was : " The medical arrangements under circumstances of considerable difficulty worked splen- didly." When Major Carter endeavoured to get matters improved he was threatened with arrest by General Cowper, who was simply passing on the ill-humour with which he was treated by Sir Beauchamp Duff. Major Carter played a brave and humane part, .and was rewarded by being called an inter- fering faddist. Sir Alfred Keogh said : The medical arrange- ments connected with thi Army in India had been for years and years most disgraceful." In blaming individuals the public will, no doubt, be guided by the feeling that if miscalculations and ignorance may possibly be pardoned in themselves, they cannot be forgiven when they are due to a blind and lofty arrogance. There are un- happily too many examples of this. When General Cowper, who was responsible for the transport, sent an urgent telegram about the conditions, this telegram was transmitted to India by Sir Percy Lake. Sir Beauchamp Duff in replying to it rebuked Sir Percy Lake for the wording of the message and added : " Please warn General Cowper that if anything of this sort again occurs, or I receive any more querulous or petulant demands for shipping, I shall at once remove him from the force, and will refuse him any further employment of any kind." The tone of this unexampled message can excite nothing but indignation. It is hard to believe, but the Government of India tried to manage the campaign on principles of limited financial liability. Sir John Nixon asked for a railway from Basra to Nasariyeh, but this was refused on the ground of expense. " Of two things, one," is a specially true motto for those who make war. You must strike with all the resources that are demon- strably necessary or forswear the job altogether. The Govern- ment of India accepted the job, but they were too much concerned all the time as to how deeply they would become entangled. With this limitation of their commitment was coupled a morbid concern for their own dignity when they deliberately chose to walk on insecure ground, and this accounts for the want of frankness—to use a mild term—in reporting the terrible defects which followed. The Viceroy accepted a great responsibility, and is judged accordingly, because, after the manner that had become fashionable in recent years, he often acted without reference to his Council.
We must revert to our first theme. India has not tradi- tionally produced bad soldiers and bad organizers. On the contrary, she has produced great soldiers and great organizers. The system for the past twelve years has been at fault. It has spread a rot in military administration. We cannot mend broken reputations, but we can and must repair the causes that create them.
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