IN TIME OF WAR

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume LXXXIII, Issue 20108, 29 March 1928, Page 7

IN TIME OF WAR

BRITAIN S DEFENCES Mr. Baldwin Declares Unified Control Impossible A SUPERHUMAN TASKißy Telegraph—Per Press Assn.—Copyright.) (A. & N.Z.) LONDON, March 27Sir Robert Hutchinson, on the third reading of the Consolidated Fund Bill, in the House of Commons, raised the question of greater co-ordination in the fighting services. He suggested that the Imperial Defence Committee should become an executive Ministry of Defence and apportion th 0 funds to the Navy, Army, and Air Force. Replying, Mr S. M. Baldwin said Britain had a number of Ministers ling with agriculture, health,, labour, tho post office, and so forth, and external affairs were dealt with by the Foreign Office. Colonial and Dominions Offices and India Office, while financial matters concerned the Treasury. No one with any administrative experience would consider for one moment the amalgamating of any of these groups of offices of the civil service. Separate Services. “You would have over-centralisation and would inevitably lose your grip ou the whole,” lie said. “It must be remefnbered that despite all developments up to date the work oa the Navy is still on the seas, of the Army on the land, and of the Air Force in the air. That being so, each of these services ■»has its own very peculiar problems, personnel, armaments, supplies, and organisation. ”

The Government’s plan was that all three services acted on. a common principle, they carried out a single policy, and their various functions and responsibilities were defined and co-ordinate 1, but the work of supervising effectively those three departments would be a very heavy burden upon a single isterThe Work of ThreeIn the Cabinet and in Parliament he would have to speak with the same knowledge that was displayed to-day by three Ministers of three separate departments. Britain’s armaments were maintained at the very minimum necessary to meet the obligations of our Empire. Mr Baldwin said it would take a su-per-Minister to supervise the three tepartments. If war came, unified control would inevitably break down. In the Great War, despite Lord Kitchener’s titanic energy, additional departments had to be formed rapidly, and before the war was over there were ten now Ministers created in this country. That this was no singular experience in Europe was shown by the fact that France, presumably a country mure ready for war than Britain, created nine new Ministers, and Italy and Greece four. The war problem was not one of centralisation. It was a m ttar of co-ordination, and, if he might say so, co-ordinated decentralisation. An Impracticable Plan. The Prime Minister referred to various committees which had reported against the scheme of having a Minister of Defence, and said he could see no useful purpose in further investigation of the idea. The defence question concerned departments other than the fighting services- It concerned the Foreign Office, India Office, Dominions and Colonial Offices, and the Board of Trade-

The present defence system hing’d on Cabinet, and the defence policy could not be considered apart from the foreign and Imperial policy, for which Cabinet, as the executive of Parliament, was responsible. The Committee of Imperial Defence had been found of very great value in the last year or two. By it close contact was kept throughout the three services, which had been drawn into far closer co-ord-ination than had ever yet been- ob tained.

Major-General Davidson said the Government had taken an important step in establishing tfie Imperial College, but they were not going fast enough. Bir Laming Worthington-Evans denied that the departments were careless overlapping, or competing with each other. Where there was a suspicion of duplication, the Committee of Imperial Defence made an investigation. °

There was considerable Ministerial interruption during his speech, but the Consolidated Bill was read a third time without a division.