The Press SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 2, 1946. Empire Defence

Press, Volume LXXXII, Issue 25022, 2 November 1946, Page 8

The Press SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 2, 1946. Empire Defence

The current House of Commons pebate on Britain’s defence reorganisation originates in the White Paper of early October. This announced and explained a plan that involved immediate changes in the Cabinet and in the services administrative system. The three service Ministers ceased to be members of the Cabinet, in which the new Minister of Defence (Mr A. V. Alexander) assumes the wide functions corresponding to modern conceptions of defence. It is his business to*represent there the views of the new Defence Committee (displacing the historic Committee of Imperial Defence), in the personnel of which, again, those conceptions are embodied. The service Ministers, the Foreign Secretary, the Lord President of the Council, the Ministers of Labour and Supply, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, and the Prime Minister sit on it with the Minister* of Defence, who- acts in the Prime Minister’s absence as his deputy and chairman. Defence, this means, is not to be regarded as the sole or special responsibility of the three service departments, each entitled to carry its own demands to the

Cabinet through its own Minister and to make inter-service differences or rivalries Cabinet issues. Defence is total, involving finance, industry, labour, and science, equally with the armed forces, and requiring the closest combination of the services and service plans, if not the ultimate unification of the services themselves. But the Minister of Defence must of course do mqre than represent to the Cabinet th§ views of the committee, formed with the help of the service Chiefs of Staff. Their joint staff is part of his Ministry. Grouped under it, also, are the new committee on Defence Research Policy, the Joint War Production Staff, Combined Operations Headquarters, the Joint Intelligence Bureau, and the Imperial Defence College. It is essentially the Minister’s task, accordingly, to make sure that service theories and plans are soundly co-ordinated, to apportion supply, and to develop the closest administrative cohesion among the service departments. This also indicates well enough the working distinction between the Parliamentary responsibility of the Minister of Defence and the separate or domestic responsibility of the service and supply Ministers. In outline and in practice the scheme is not new. It was proposed by the Geddes Committee after the first world war, accepted, but not adopted. Its merits were gradually forgotten, and, although the threat overhanging Europe in the ’thirties caused a strong revival of the demand for it, Mr Baldwin and Mr Chamberlain resisted, and the utmost that was done was to give Sir Thomas Inskip, without the means to fulfil it, the responsibility of “ co-ordinating defence ”, But during the war of 1939-45, the system of planning, decision, and execution that was evolved was very much the same as that which is now confirmed and elaborated, the main difference being that the Prime Minister,- though he retains the right to attend the Committee of Defence and to preside when he does, ceases to be Minister of Defence. The White Paper, therefore, announced a policy which had already in essentials been tested and vindicated. It was welcomed as such, and the debate will probably shew that only two points invite serious question or criticism. Mr Attlee, opening the debate, dealt with one, and it recurs in the report printed this morning. That is, crudely, that the scheme looks more like a scheme to reorganise the defence of Britain than to reorganise Empire defence. The other is that the White Paper was almost wholly silent on the subject of civil defence, which is reserved, however, from the province of the Minister of Defence. More may be disclosed during the debate.

Mr Attlee went out to meet the objection that Empire defence is not included and - provided for. First, Britain could not “ lay down ” a scheme to be adopted by the Dominion Governments; second, they have, or will have, obligations to the Council and under regional defence arrangements; third, the “ rigid, centralised “ machinery ” sometimes suggested for the exchange of defence information was rejected by Dominion representatives in the recent London conversations; and fourth,, the existing means of consultation are preserved, and there are proposals to adopt new means of “ concerting “ common plans (The Labour Party’s manifesto, in the section on defence, throws some light on these.) This is sound and satisfying, up to a point which it 4s not yet possible to pass; and, if the well-defined views of Canada and South Africa are borne in mind, it may certainly be said that Mr Attlee, before Brigadier Head spoke, had disposed of his argument for an Imperial defence scheme framed without “ slavish ” regard for the Statute of Westminster. But Mr Attlee did not say enough, and could not say enough, to satisfy those, in Britain and in the Dominions, who want to be assured that in fact the Dominions will assume their full share of the responsibility for Empire security. It will be a share consistent with their United Nations obligations; it will be a share adjusted to regional defence arrangements, in some of which Great Britain will no doubt be a partner. But when general and regional obligations are clear and undertaken, the question will still remain, whether they are adequate to the demands of Empire security, as such; and. unless they are, an undue burden will still fail on Britain.