BRITISH WAR PLANS

Grey River Argus, 1 May 1942, Page 3

BRITISH WAR PLANS

OFFICIAL ACCOUNT Staff Activities ’ ■ RUGBY, April 21. Ai White Paper on the organisation for joint planning, presented by the Prime Minister to Parliament, was issued to-day. The Paper states that the ultimate responsibility for the conduct of the war rests with 'the War Cabinet, the Chiefs of Staff being their professional advisers. The Prime Minister and Minister of Defence superintends, on behalf of the War Cabinet, the work of the Chiefs of Staff Committee. He is assisted by the Defence Committee, which comprises, besides the Prime Minister as Chairman, Mr. Attlee, Mr. Eden, and Mr. Lyttelton, three Service Ministers, the Chiefs of Staff, and the Chief of the Combined. Operations. Other Ministers are invited to attend as necessary.

The Joint Staff, advocated from time to itime in Parliament and the Press has, in fact existed for many years. It has been progressively reorganised and expanded in the light of war experience. It consists oi specially selected officers of the three services, who live and work together in the same office, thus they learn to think and act, in terms, not of three separate units, but are animated by the same spirit and the S'me conception of a single task. At their service, for information and advice are the three departmental staffs of the Navy, Army and Air Force, the joint planning staff, the directors of plans of the Admiralty, War Office and Air Ministry. These divide their time between their own Minitsteri.es, and the Jiojnt Planning Centres.

Each planning section consists of specially selected officers, who work as a team in every sense of tthe word. They share not only the same task but the same office. They not only mess together, but sleep in the same building. ' They are available for consultation a)t any hour of the day and night. The planning section’s duties are as follows: The Strategical Planning Section, under the Chiefs of Staff and the Directors of Plans, keeps the general situation under constant review, and prepares an appreciation, from time to time, with, recommendations, as to the action we should adopt. The executive of the planning section is charged with concerting ways and means of putting into effect ithe plans which have been approved. The future operational planning section concentrates on the preparation of future plans, even though these may not be immediately within the range of practical politics. Thus it is not rigidly bound by the limitation of forces, transport and other resources immediately available.

The joint pjanfning staff ipj of course, primarily concerned ; with military plans, but .in total war other considerations, political, economic etcetera, have t 0 be taken into account. Consequently, the Foreign Office has permanent representatives on the Joint Planning Staff, while the political warfare executive and Ministeries of War, Transport, Economic Warfare, and Home Security, have liaison officers, who are called into consultation.

The Joint Intelligence Sub-Com-mittee consists of the Directors of Intelligence of the three Service Departments, and the Deputy DirecitorGeneral of the Ministry of Economic Warfare. These will work part-time as a team. They have under them the joint staffs of the three services, Foreign Office, and Ministry of Economic Warfare. These work on exactly the same lines as the sections of the Joint Planning Staff. Broadly speaking, it will be the responsibility of the Joint -Intelligence Sub-Com mittee to collate and assess all information about the .enemy, and in particular prepare appreciations of the most likely course of enemy action from time to time. The Joint Planning Staff and the Joint Intelligence Sub-Committee will work hand-in-hand, and both will be. regularly summoned, to discuss problems with the Chiefs of Staff. No attempt will be made in this paper to cover the many other fields of activit-”- in which all the three services, and the civil departments are jointly concerned. Arrangements for co-ordinating these are based on me same broad principles. In order to ensure that operational planning, production and planning are even more clbsely combined than hitherto, there has recently been created a joint war production staff. The body, under the chairmanr ship of the Minister of Production, comprises the chief adviser to the Minister of Production on programme and planning, the chief technical officers of the supply depots, and representatives of the Service Chiefs of Staff. Representatives of the Ministers of Labour, War and Transport, will also attend as necessary. Before the War, the Secretariat of the Comr mittee of Imperial Defence consisted of selected officers of the three fighting services, and civil service. They Were responsible for arranging business, drafting reports, maintaining records of the Committee of Imperial Defence and its many sub-com-mittees. Working in close touch with 'them, and in the same building, was the Secretariat of the Cabinet. At the outbreak, the two Secretariats were immediately merged to form the Secretariat of the War Cabinet, and of its committees, military and civil. Military members of this secretariat constitute the staff of the office of the Minister of Defence, and arrange business, draft reports, and . maintain records of military committees of the War Cabinet, from the Defence Committee downwards. They are thus in a position to keep the Minister of Defence informed on the progress of the work, and to take his instrucions on a'ny matters on which he may wish to give direction. A note states that members of the Chiefs-of-Staff Committee are General Sir Alan Brook .(Chairman), Admiral of the Fleet Sir Dudley Pound, Air Chief Marshal Sir Hastings Ismay, and Vice-Admiral Lord Louis Mountbatten. In order to ease the ' burden of the dual task of the Chiefs of Staff, of advising the Government on defence policy as a whole, and directing the work of their, own services, each has a vice-chief. The vice-chiefs of staff hold regular meetings at which they deal with the matters delegated to them. The members are Vice-Marshal Moore, Lieut.-Generai Nye, and Air-Chief Marshal Sir Wilfred Freeman. So many evacuated children have returned to London, that the available schools are overflowing. Two thousand were locked ouit to-day. It is estimated that 10,000 will be playing in the streets bv the end of May, because the Civil Defence auhorit’es are occuoving two-thirds of the school buildings.