ARMY ORGANISATION.

Timaru Herald, Volume LXIV, Issue 3552, 26 April 1901, Page 4

ARMY ORGANISATION.

WOLSELEY V. LANSDOWNE. At rare intervals in every session the House of Lords is the centre of interest. March 4th was one of these occasional days when a breath of life passes through the Upper House and violates its debates. The cause of this was a motion by the Duke* of Bedford, calling attention to the administration of the War Office and asking for information. Lord Raglan, the new Under-Secretary for War, replied to this ducal seeker after knowledge. He told the House that the War Office is divided into four great departments, presided over by the AdjutantGeneral, the Quartermaster-General, the Director-General of Ordnance, and the In-spector-General of Fortifications. In addition there are the departments of the Military Secretary and the Intelligence Department. The relation of the Com-mander-in-Chief to the various departments he described in a very ingenious way. It is true that the Commander-in-Chief no longer has control over these departments, but he has the right of supervising them. Control he defined as "standing over a maa and seeing that he did the particular

thing he had been ordered to do," while' supervising consists in issuing orders, and in inquiring 'whether they have been carried out. He went on to say that it depends on the Commander-in-Chief himself whether or not this supervision is to be a real oversight. Then, quoting his own experiences, he said that the Secretary of State and the Commander-in-Chief were constantly in communication with one another. In a naive way he said that his room lay between the rooms of these two officials, and that right through the day one or other of them, was calling on his neighbour. Lord Wolseley, it was widely known, intended to make a public protest against the present division of responsibility at the War Office. Naturally there was some anticipation that the occasion would be ,' and undoubtedly there were great 1 Abilities in the public statement of the ?°Hrino- Commander-in-Chief. It is al- ? to hear a great official ways intei _ ,^ tem which he tas arranging the W °. rk f {,• L ranees. Lord Wolseley himself, too, k a ,_ distinction!, personage, a soldier of urn. campaigns, the victor in - several trying - „ ut 0 j In all these there was the stuffc - , va which something memorable might hj« been made, but the House of Lords is incurably listless, and Lord Wolseley himself chose a bad method. A speech, in the simple style of the soldier, might have laid hold of the House, but unfortunately Lord Wolseley, instead of speaking out of a full mind, read a long statement summing up his experiences and recommendations. He read at an almost breathless rate, without paying any heed to divisions of sentences or paragraphs. Once or twice the meaning of a sentence was brought out by a change in voice, but generally he drove on in the same reckless way. The statement, which was circulated among the members of the Press Gallery,covers twelve pages, so all that I can attempt is the briefest summary. Lord Wolseley's main charge against the War Office administration is that the responsibility is now so divided that there is no one military authority responsible for the efficiency of the Army. According to the scheme set up in 1870 by Mr Cardwell, and extended by Mr Stanhope in 1888, the Commander-in-Chief was the supreme head of the Army, and he alone owed direct responsibility to the Secretary of State. In 1895, however; as the result of the Harrington Commission, the four departments of the W;:r Office were emancipated from the control of the Commander-in-Chief, and their chiefs became directly responsible to the Secretary for War. The result is that .the civilian head is called upon to decide complicated technical matters with regard to which the different military authorities may differ, without having the benefit of the Commander-in-Chief s -views. He alone, as a military exper can hold the balance between the cjaflicting opinions. One other potit in the statement is worthy of special notice. It often happens thco the recommendations of the Commaiider-in-Chie! ore not adopted by the Secretary of State, generally owing to the aread of increased expenditure. Lord Wolseley proposes that whenever a conflict of opinion arises between the Secretary of State and the Commander-in-Chief, the arguments on both sides should be submitted to the public, with whom the final judgment would lie. Lord Lansdowne rose, when Lord Wolseley had finished his statement. He began in a quiet way which promised nothing eventful, but fcefore he closed he gave the debate a genuinely dramatic turn. As might have been expected, he made a strong defence of the 1895 regulations. Previous to that time the Secretary of State always consulted the departmental heads, but they had then no authority or responsibility. The new scheme substituted for these unsatisfactory relations a properly constituted standing of the departmental heads- to the Secretary of State. To that principle the Government intended to adhere. Then came the dramatic moment offi the debate, when the weapons of attack were turned against Lord Wolseley himself. Lord Lansdowne took up the phrase of Lord Baglan that the influence of a Commander-in-Chief was to a large extent what he liked to make it. Starting from this point, he made what was nothing less than indictment of Lord Wolseley's conduct as Commander-in-Chief. Lord Wolseley had taken too narrow a view of his duties. If he had taken a larger view of them he would have discovered that he was responsible for the auxiliary forces, and these parts of the national organisation would have been put on a better footing than the one on which they now are. He would have, learned as well that it was his business to prepare plans of offence and defence. If he had taken-these generous views oB his position, he would have been able to tell the Government that Ladysmith was riofc a suitable place for defence, and he would have informed them that one Army Corps was quite insufficient to carry on the war in South Africa. To Lord Wolseley this ' accusation must have been very galling, but he made no protest. Lord Lansdowne himself, though he employed the opportunity for his own ends, did not abuse it in the rude way in which a less refined man might have done. His tone in this part of his speech was firmer than im the rest of it, but the charge was so delicately and politely made that one might i quite easily have missed its meaning.— I ("Daily Chronicle.")