“BLOATED” ADMIRALTY

Greymouth Evening Star, 8 May 1931, Page 9

“BLOATED” ADMIRALTY

FIGURES VERSUS FACTS. It appears to be inevitable that whenever the subject of national economy crops up for debate in the Commons the “bloated staff of the Admiralty is dragged in like King Charles’s head in Mr Dick’s memorial. Only the other day Sir Donald Maclean saw his opportunity and dragged forth the hoary head. With arms’ length barnestness he faithfully repeated the now rather familiar formula that “the personnel of the Navy has decreased from 146,000 in 1914 to 96 000 in 1930, but the staff has increased from 5.800 to 7,900 (writes Sir H. Russell, in the Loudon “Sunday Times”). This is a perfectly correct statement of fact. But is it not about time to ask for a definite explanation as to why this apparently absurd disproportion is permitted to continue? A Socialist Government has been in office, for twenty months. Reduction in expenditure upon the fighting services has been one of its very special concerns. During this period there has been a reorganisation of the Admiralty departments. Seven divisions were reduced to live; on the other hand the Naval Air section became a division, so the niimber stands at six. The departments, officially so classified, remained unchanged at twenty-six. As a result of this re-shuffling the establishment was reduced by seventeen officers and civi.l employees. The changes were entirely confined to the Naval staff. Before the reorganisation took place the Parliamentary Secretary and the Permanent Secretary made a thorough tour of the Admiralty. They visited every room which could possibly justify a visit, and interviewed every officer and civil servant, questioned him as to his work, and made notes on the value of or necessity for this work. The result was as stated.

UNFAIR COMPARISON.

• The comparison between the strength of the naval personnel in 1914 and in 1930 as furnishing a standard for administrative organisation is totally irrelevant. In 1914 there was no Naval staff. There was an Admiralty war staff, consisting of the operations, intelligence, and mobilisation divisions. There was an Air department of which Captain Murray Sueter was Director. Neither chemical noi’ mine warfare interested the Admiralty in those days; when the Great War broke out we had to borrow from Russia mines for harbour defence.

Admiralty organisation in 1914 was based upon a hundred years of naval peace. The total inadequacy of it for modern war administration was promptly revealed. No liaison existed with the Mercantile Marine, and it took more than two years to get the convoy system going. The end of the war found the Admiralty in a perfect and complete state for war administration. Further, it found it equipped with a thorough organisation for research and experiment in the new nfethods of waging war. It then became a question of policy. Was the administration of the British Navy to lapse back to mere peacetime maintenance, or was it to be continued on a footing of immediate readiness for war? Every ship in full commission in the British Navy is regarded aS, on active service, ready to go into action forthwith if required to do so. Is it necessary to complement, this traditional readiness for active servibe by completely organised administrative readiness? This is the real question, and it has no more to do with the difference in personnel in 1914 and now than it is no longer necessary to treat the British Navy as prepared for immediate action, then the “bloated” Admiralty staff is a sheer extravagance. But apparently one of the very few things upon \vhich the Labour Government sees eye to eye with the Conservative Government is that it is still necessary to treat the Navy as a completely effective war organisation, and so we may assume that the Admiralty will continue to run its own business in its own way.