The Press SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 22, 1941. War Office Changes

Press, Volume LXXVII, Issue 23493, 22 November 1941, Page 8

The Press SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 22, 1941. War Office Changes

The changes at the War Office announced in the cable news this week have had a good press, partly because the new appointees are young as generals go and partly because the new Chief of the Imperial General Staff is an expert in mechanised warfare. Nevertheless, it seems clear that the changes have been made for reasons of policy rather than in order to bring young men to the front, for in the period since Mr Hore Belisha’s army reforms the War Office has not suffered .from the rule of seniority. None of the changes since the outbreak of war has been explicable as a substitution of young men for old. In the circumstances, it is natural to ask, as some London newspapers are asking, why changes have been so frequent. There have been four Chiefs of the Imperial General Staff since the outbreak of war. Lord Gort, appointed to the position in 1937 at the age of 51, was replaced by Sir Edmund Ironside a few days after the outbreak of war. Sir Edmund Ironside yras succeeded after nine months by Sir John Dill; and Sir John Dill has been replaced after 18 months by Sir Alan Brooke, Moreover, each of these changes at the top has set in motion changes in ihe four home commands and in the membership of the Army Council. On the side of political control there has been the same variability. Mr Hore Belisha, who had been Secretary of State for War for more than three years, was pushed out of office on May 10, 1940, in favour of Mr Oliver Stanley. Mr Stanley lasted only four months before he gave way to Mr Eden. Mr Eden became Foreign Secretary after seven months, and his successor, Captain Margesson, may not last very long. These political shifts have involved a change in relations between the War Office and the supreme direction of the war. Mr Hore Belisha and Mr Oliver Stanley were members of the' War Cabinet; in the Cabinet reshuffle of May, 1940, Mr Churchill became Minister for Defence and the Secretary of State for War, together with the other service Ministers, left the Var Cabinet. Although change may be preferable to stagnation, it is difficult to believe that such frequency of change makes for efficient and vigorous control. Indeed, it is obvious that in any large and intricate organisation frequency of change in the higher personnel tend:, to defeat its own objects by increasing the power of subordinates. 'A State department which has a new Minister every six months or so falls under the control of permanent officials; if its permanent head is changed frequently, subordinate officials gain in power. These tendencies will be more marked in an organisation like the War Office where supreme control, instead of being centralised in a single permanent head working with a political head, is dispersed. The British Army is controlled by an Army Council of nine members, five of them military, presided over by the Secretary of State for War. “ Constitu- “ tionally,” says Captain Liddell Hart, “ the “Chief of the Imperial General Staff is only “ the first among equals, and. at times in the /‘past the holder of this office has been sharply “ reminded of this fact by other military mem“bers of the Army Council when he tried to “ impose a policy with which they disagreed.” A common- criticism of the Army Council has been that it is a ponderous body, too often the battle-ground of sectional interests; and beyond a certain point frequent changes of personnel must make it more ponderous, since men have to work together for some time before they can function quickly and efficiently as a body. It is perhaps pertinent to recall that there has been no important change in the German high command since the outbreak of war.