by the Q.M.G. He was to act as a link between the War Office and the civilian manufacturer; he was to have charge of the arsenal; he was to be responsible for the design and construction of fortifications and other military works, including barracks. His responsibility was to cease on the delivery of stores to the army; he was to be in no way concerned with administration within the army, and he was to have no executive status within the army itself either in peace or war. By this arrangement the committee hoped that "increased attention would be given to the evergrowing requirements of military or technical science."

This is a necessarily brief outline of the recommendations of the Esher Committee. They were adopted virtually en bloc in 1904. For ten years of peace the War Office was modelled on this plan, and it was the framework on which the army that fought in the Great War was organized. The scheme was thus tested to its utmost capacity, and it emerged successful. It is not claimed that the scheme was perfect in its inception or in its working. Modifications had to be made under the pressure of experience, but in the main the basic principles of the organization were unshaken. In other wars our administrative arrangements had been a drag on the fighting forces; in the titanic effort of the Great War the army was better served than ever, yet the task was of a magnitude never dreamt of by those who drew up the scheme. The army expanded twenty-fold or more. time 9000 tons of ammunition had to be supplied daily to the fighting line; 200 tons of provisions might be required per mile of front during intense fighting; 3,000,000 men and 500,000 animals had to be fed each day. All this was done in a manner that evoked the admiration of our allies, and happily avoided the scandals to which the public had become almost inured in previous campaigns.

It is, moreover, a matter of special significance that when attempts were made during the war to depart from the principles of the Esher Report they invariably proved to be mistaken. At one period the services of transport and supply in the rearward zones were under the Inspector General of Communications. This division of function was found unworkable, and all their services had to be consolidated under the Q.M.G. At another period the control of railways and inland waterways was placed under the separate direction of Sir Eric Geddes. During the

period of trench warfare, transport and supply became almost automatic and the defects of divided control were not revealed. When the period of movement began, these services also had to be centralized, thus again vindicating the wisdom of the Esher recommendations. This shows how easily a system, that is inherently wrong and unsound, may work all right under the artificial conditions of peace, or even static war, and will only break down under the test of reality in a war of movement. When, therefore, it is proposed to depart in essence from the plan that has successfully stood so great a strain as the last war, it is only right and proper that the onus of proof should be cast on the advocates of such change and that the public should be vigilant and critical.

The changes that are the subject of the present controversy were first announced in the press on September 12th and became operative on October 1, 1927. On account of the scanty information vouchsafed to the public, it is difficult to be clear as to the details of these reforms; but their general principles are plain enough to be distinctly disquieting. The control of stores and their custody are to be taken from the Quartermaster General and given to the Master General of the Ordnance. The M.G.O. is also to have the maintenance and repair of all stores, whether ordinary stores such as boots, or technical stores such as guns and tanks, with the important exception of vehicles on the establishment of the Army Service Corps. He is also to take over the design of all army service vehicles, and in turn he will hand over to the Q.M.G. responsibility for fortifications and works, i.e. general building operations. In order to carry out these new duties a deputy M.G.O. is to be created, who will become a fourth principal staff officer with the army in the field. This is a radical departure from the Esher plan.

In so far as these changes centralize responsibility for design they are altogether proper. It is quite wrong that army service motor vehicles, which may have to cross country and serve tanks, should be designed by a separate department from the tanks themselves. It is also right to place the building of barracks and other works under the same authority as is responsible for transport and quartering. But it is altogether another matter to take the control of stores and their maintenance out of the province of the chief administrator, and entrust them to a separate and co-equal

member of the army council in the War Office and a separate principal staff officer in the field. This is a deplorable and fatal departure from sound method. It runs right in the face of war experience, and it violates a principle which Sir John Fortescue has said has been established after two centuries of controversy, namely that "the man responsible for the wagon must also be responsible for the load."

It was said recently in a leading article in The Times that the issue in dispute was too technical for the judgment of laymen. This item of the separation of transport from stores, which is the kernel of the controversy, should be clear to the most moderate intelligence. Consider how it will work in actual practice. The Q.M.G. is responsible for transport; transport facilities are limited; a question of priority arises: the Q.M.G. says he is unable to give the M.G.O. the priority needed for his stores; the M.G.O. says the rapid despatch of stores is of more importance than the movement of reserves of food or building material. There is at once a deadlock, which either the chief of the General Staff must try and compose, or the Commander-in-Chief must decide. This will involve delay and probably friction, which in peace may be an amusing diversion from monotony, but which in war may have the most dangerous consequences.

Instances of such differences can be multiplied indefinitely. They are not imaginary; they figure all down the pages of military history. Wellington suffered from them until he made clear the duties and responsibilities of his subordinates and acted himself as the co-ordinator between them. For example, the M.G.O. wants to locate stores in certain depôts in stated proportions; the Q.M.G., honestly differing and responsible for cognate and contributory services, says that such a distribution would seriously dislocate his railway, his road and his housing arrangements. Here again is a conflict between experts for the Commander-in-Chief to settle. The same difficulties would apply to repairs, to workshops and their location in reference to railways and roads; and above all to the suitability of the buildings which the Q.M.G. would have to supply for the work for which his colleague will be responsible. The issue need not be further laboured. It flies in the face of success in the past and models itself upon our failures. In the opinion of many officers of great experience, the system will break down.

Lieutenant-General Sir George McMunn is the only retired officer of eminence who has appeared publicly to support the change and even his advocacy is somewhat half-hearted. He suggests that if the arrangement is found to be unworkable it is so clear-cut that it can be changed by a stroke of the pen! This is a good example of the loose thinking that passes for argument in time of peace. Vested interests do not so readily allow themselves to be set aside. Things may reach a sorry pass before they are actually judged to have broken down, and in the meantime they may have had calamitous effect on the conduct of operations. It is not so easy to bring together in harmonious working by a "stroke of the pen " departments which have for years of peace lived, thought and worked apart, and which have possibly acquired a certain traditional bias. Any such process of amalgamation may involve a readjustment of grades and offices, in the interests both of efficiency and economy, and it is not a process which can comfortably be carried out during active operations.

It must be common knowledge to anybody who has served in the army that, in spite of much loyalty, camaraderie and goodwill, the struggle for departmental aggrandizement plays no small part. No doubt each combatant in this conflict of departmental warfare honestly believes that he is serving the public cause according to his lights. Nevertheless the fact remains that if these internecine disputes were eliminated, efficiency all round would result. In the British Expeditionary Force internal disputes were remarkably few, largely because of the nearness to reality, and also because of the clear demarcation of functions between the different members of the staff. In the War Office unfortunately the opposite has been the case, and it is an open secret that before, during, and since the war, relations between the departments of the Q.M.G. and M.G.O. have been lacking in harmony. For this there are a number of reasons. In the first place the department of the M.G.O. has been regarded as a repository of superior technical attainment. It is manned by gunners and sappers, who have maintained an attitude of intellectual detachment from the main body of the army. This is largely the outcome of the period when these corps were actually and physically separated from the rest of the army; when their headquarters, the Board of Ordnance, was located at the Tower;

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when even commissions were signed, not by the King, but by the Master General of Ordnance; and when contingents of both these corps did not become an integral part of the army until an emergency arose and they had been requisitioned for by the Secretary at War. The Board of Ordnance was not abolished till 1885, and it is not surprising that some of the exclusive attitude still lingers among its descendants.

The differences between these two military members of council have been further widened and deepened by the advent and growth of motor traction. The Army Service Corps-that wise creation of Sir Redvers Buller-had always been administered and equipped by the Q.M.G. So long as its equipment was horse-drawn the matter was hardly one on which differences as to design need arise. When the motor appeared the Q.M.G. persistently insisted upon retaining control of design. As time went on the logic of his position became less and less defensible, until it has now lost all justification. The design of fighting vehicles like tanks and gun-carrying caterpillars (known as dragons) on the one hand, and on the other hand supply vehicles, which may also be required to cross country, is becoming more and more a common problem. The existence of a mechanical force of all arms makes this abundantly clear. And yet the Q.M.G. has resolutely resisted all attempts to transfer these functions to the central design authority.

It must not however be imagined that there is nothing to be said on the other side. The advocates of the change have a case which, however fundamentally unsound, can be presented in an attractive and plausible form. The case rests on the admitted fact that the Esher Committee was pre-mechanical, and that the internal combustion engine has introduced an entirely new factor into war. It is contended that in days of horse-drawn transport there was inevitably little scope for progressive ideas, whereas now the problem is one of unceasing change and opportunity. In a few years we have passed, from a state of affairs where the design of the motive power was controlled and fixed by nature, to a position where unlimited scope is afforded to the inventive faculties of man. In consequence, technical science has assumed a position of transcendent importance, and experts must be given greater control within the army both in the province of thought and execution. Once this is conceded it readily follows that all