Chapter LVI: Army and Navy in Parliament (2)

After the General Election of December, 1900, there was a shifting of offices in the Cabinet, by which Mr. Brodrick succeeded Lord Lansdowne as Secretary of State for War, and Lord Selborne became First Lord of the Admiralty instead of Mr. Goschen. Lord Roberts was brought home from South Africa to become Commander-in-Chief, and the direction of the war was left in the hands of Lord Kitchener. The first important event in the new Parliament was a speech by Lord Wolseley in the House of Lords, in which he warned the nation against the dangerous consequences of the system introduced in 1895, which failed to give its proper place to the military judgment in regard to preparations for war. The warning was disregarded. Mr. Brodrick announced the determination of the Government to maintain the system set up in 1895, and to give to Lord Roberts as Commander-in-Chief the same position of maimed and crippled authority as had been given to Lord Wolseley six years before.

Mr. Brodrick, while carrying on the war in South Africa, attempted at the same time to reform the army. The results were the more unfortunate because on vital matters, both of organization at the War Office and of the reorganization of the army, Mr. Brodrick insisted on overriding the great soldier to whom, as Commander-in-Chief, was due whatever confidence the country gave to the military administration. Mr. Brodrick was much preoccupied with the defence of the United Kingdom against invasion. In the debate on the Army Estimates of 1901, Dilke said:

"I am one of those who hold that the command of the seas is the
defence of this country. I believe that the British Army exists
mainly for the reinforcement of the Indian garrison, and, if
necessary, as the rudiment of that army which, in the event of a
great war, would be necessary."

Dilke continued to support the Admiralty in its endeavours to strengthen the navy. In the debate on the Navy Estimates of 1901 (March 22nd) he said:

"The Secretary of State for the Colonies a few years ago made a
speech in favour of an alliance with a military Power. [Footnote:
See _infra_, p. 491.] He said that the alternative was to build up
so as to make ourselves safe against a combination of three Powers,
and that that would entail an addition of fifty per cent. to the
estimates. Since that time we have added more than fifty per cent.
to our estimates. Of course the expenditure is very great; but is
there a man in this House who believes that it is not necessary for
us to maintain that practical standard which would lead even three
Powers to hesitate before attacking? During the last year we have,
happily, had friendship between ourselves and Germany; I believe
that friendship may long continue, and I hope it will. But it is
impossible to shut our eyes to the fact that there have been
distinctly proposed to the German Houses, by Admiral Tirpitz,
estimates which are based on the possibility of a war with England.
Von der Goltz, who is the highest literary authority on this
subject, has said the same thing. We have seen also that remarkable
preparation of strategic cables on the part of Germany ... in order
to be entirely independent of British cables in the event of a
possible naval war. In face of facts of that kind, which can be
infinitely multiplied, it seems to me it would be monstrous on our
part to fail to maintain that standard, and that it is our bounden
duty to make up for the delays which have occurred, and to vote
programmes for the future which should be sufficient to keep up that
standard."

When the Navy Estimates for 1902 were introduced into the House of Commons by Arnold-Forster as Parliamentary Secretary to the Admiralty, Mr. Lough moved an amendment: "That the growing expenditure on the naval defences of the Empire imposes under the existing conditions an undue burden on the taxpayers of the United Kingdom." Dilke, in opposing the amendment, deprecated the introduction of party considerations into a discussion concerning the navy. The time taken to build ships ought to be borne in mind. The usual period had lately been four years; many of the ships of the 1897 programme had not yet been commissioned; therefore it was necessary to remember that the country would go into a naval war with ships according to the programme of four or five years before war was declared. Mr. Goschen was a careful First Lord of the Admiralty, yet Mr. Goschen in his programme year after year alluded to the necessity of maintaining a fleet which would cause not two but three Powers to pause before they attacked us. To his (Dilke's) mind, it was infinitely more important to the country that its expenditure should be shaped, not towards meeting a sudden attack by two Powers, which was not going to occur, but towards meeting--not immediately, but in time to come--the possibility of an eventual joining together of three Powers, one of which was very rapidly building a magnificent fleet. From that point of view the programme of the Government this year was a beggarly programme.

In introducing the Navy Estimates for 1903 Arnold-Forster said that they were of a magnitude unparalleled in peace or war. Dilke, in supporting them, said (March 17th):

"The standard which Lord Spencer gave to this House was not a fleet
equivalent to three fleets--not a fleet, certainly, on all points
equivalent to the fleets of France, Germany, and Russia--but a
standard which gave us such a position in the world of fleets as
would cause three Powers to pause before they entered into a
coalition against us. That was a position he had always contended
was necessary for the safety of this country.... The only weak point
that one could discern as really dangerous in the future was the
training of the officers for high command and the selection of
officers, which would give this country, in the event of war, that
real unity of operations which ought to be our advantage against any
allied Powers."

V.

On June 20th, 1902, Lord Charles Beresford had raised the question of the organization of the Admiralty, which he held to be defective for the purpose of preparation for war. "The administrative faculty," he said, "should be absolutely separate from the executive faculty, but at present they were mixed up." Campbell-Bannerman held that no change was necessary. Dilke supported Lord Charles Beresford, and after reviewing the cordite debates of 1895, to which both the previous speakers had referred, gave his reasons for holding that the duty of the Cabinet was to control both services in order to secure that each should take its proper share in defence. "If there was a very strong man, or even one who thought himself very strong, at the head of either department, the present system tended to break down, because, unless there was some joint authority in the Cabinet strong enough to control even a strong First Lord of the Admiralty, no joint consideration of the views of the two departments could be obtained. At the present moment the two services competed." Lord Charles Beresford and Dilke were supported by Sir John Colomb, and in his reply Arnold-Forster said: "I cannot but reaffirm the belief I held before I stood at this table, and since I have stood here, that there is a need for some reinforcement of the intellectual equipment which directs or ought to direct the enormous forces of our Empire." The question was raised again on August 6th by Major Seely, in a speech in which he commented on the lack of a body charged with the duty of studying strategical questions. Mr. Balfour thereupon said:

"We cannot leave this matter to one department or two departments
acting separately. It is a joint matter; it must be a joint matter.
I hope my honourable friend will take it from me that the Government
are fully alive, and have, if I may say so, long been fully alive,
to the difficulty of the problem which presents itself to his mind
and which he has explained to the House; and that that problem is
one always present to our minds. It is one which we certainly do not
mean to neglect to meet and grapple with to the best of our
ability."

In 1903, in an article contributed to the Northern Newspaper Syndicate, Dilke wrote:

"We are face to face with the fact that Mr. Brodrick's scheme is
admitted from all sides, except by those actually responsible for it
who are still holding office, to be a failure; that under this
scheme the charge on the British Empire for defence in time of peace
stands at eighty-six millions sterling, of which fifty-two millions
at least are for land defence, nevertheless ill secured; that
without a complete change of system these gigantic figures must
rapidly increase; and that, while all agree that in our case the
navy ought to be predominant, no one seems to be able to control the
War Office, or to limit the expenditure upon land defence as
contrasted with naval preparations. The service members of the House
of Commons, who used to be charged with wasting their own and the
nation's time upon military details, or upon proposals for increase
of expenditure, have shown their patriotism and their intelligence
by going to the root of this great question. They brought about the
declaration of the Secretary of the Admiralty, Mr. Arnold-Forster,
on June 20th, 1902, and the complete acceptance of that declaration
by the Prime Minister on August 6th. They have now forced on
Parliament and on the Prime Minister the necessity of taking real
action upon his declaration that 'the problem of Imperial defence
cannot be left to one department or two departments acting
separately.' The utilization of the resources of the British Empire
for war must be the business of the Prime Minister, who is above the
War Office and the Admiralty, and who alone can lead the Cabinet to
co-ordinate the efforts of the two services."

In October, 1903, Arnold-Forster was appointed to succeed Mr. Brodrick as Secretary of State for War. He had previously expressed, in conversation, his wish to see the whole subject of Imperial defence entrusted to a Committee of three men conversant with it, and had named Sir Charles Dilke and Sir John Colomb as two of the three whom he would choose if he had the power. In November a Committee of three was appointed by Mr. Balfour to report on the organization of the War Office. Its members were Lord Esher, Admiral Sir John (now Lord) Fisher, and Sir George Sydenham Clarke (now Lord Sydenham). The first instalment of this Committee's report, published on February 1st, 1904, proposed the reconstitution of the War Office on the model of the Board of Admiralty, and as a preliminary the dismissal of the Commander-in-Chief and the heads of the great departments at the War Office.

At the same time the Cabinet Committee of Defence was reconstituted under the presidency of the Prime Minister (Mr. Balfour). Thus at length, eleven years after Sir Charles Dilke's first conversations with Mr. Balfour on the subject, was adopted the suggestion he had urged for so many years, and so fully explained in his speech of March 16th, 1894, that a Prime Minister should undertake to consider the needs both of the army and navy, and the probable functions of both in war.

VI.

The result was very soon manifest in a complete change of policy, which was no doubt facilitated by the presence in the Cabinet, as Secretary of State for War, of Mr. Arnold-Forster, one of the signatories of the joint letter of 1894.

On March 28th, 1905, Arnold-Forster said:

"We have been adding million after million to our naval expenditure.
Are all these millions wasted? If it be true, as we are told by
representatives of the Admiralty, that the navy is in a position
such as it has never occupied before--that it is now not only our
first line of defence, but our guarantee for the possession of our
own islands--is that to make no difference to a system which has
grown up avowedly and confessedly on the basis of defending these
islands by an armed land force against an invasion? Is that to make
no difference? Is this view some invention of my own imagination?
No, sir, that is the deliberate conclusion of the Government,
advised by a body which has been called into, I believe, a useful
existence during the last eighteen months, and which I regret was
not called into existence much longer ago--the Committee of
Defence.... I have seen it stated that, provided our navy is
sufficient, the greatest anticipation we can form in the way of a
landing of a hostile army would be a force of 5,000. I should be
deceiving the House if I thought that represented the extreme naval
view. The extreme naval view is that the crew of a dinghy could not
land in this country in the face of the navy."

This speech showed the conversion of the Government, for which Sir Charles Dilke had laboured so long, to the doctrine of the primacy of the navy and of defence by the command of the sea.

On May 11th, Mr. Balfour in the name of the Committee of Defence put forth the general view which that body had reached. In the first place, provided the navy was efficient, a successful invasion of the country upon a large scale need not be contemplated. Secondly, the Committee had gone on the broad line that our force should as far as possible be concentrated at the centre of the Empire. This had rendered unnecessary expenditure which had been undertaken under a different view of our needs, the most notable case being the works at St. Lucia, which had been made by Lord Carnarvon into a great naval base. Lastly, with regard to India, the Government adopted Lord Kitchener's view that in addition to drafts there should be available in the relatively early stages of the war eight divisions of infantry and other corresponding arms.

Dilke, who had described himself as a constant supporter of the blue-water view, agreed with the Government with regard to invasion, and welcomed Mr. Balfour's moderate view with regard to the needs of India. But he pointed out that vast sums of money had been spent in the fortification of places which were now discovered to be unnecessary.

"He asked the Committee to remember how far the responsibility of
all this expenditure had been on the present occupants of office. He
believed that the Defence Committee of the Cabinet was created by
Lord Rosebery at the end of his Administration in 1895. That was the
first form of the Committee. Immediately the new Government came in
it assumed its second form, and the Defence Committee of the
Conservative Government, formed in 1895 under the presidency of the
Duke of Devonshire, lasted for many years, and was composed of
substantially the same gentlemen as were in power now. It was
constantly vouched to the House as the great co-ordinating
authority, and as the body responsible for expenditure on an
enormous scale on principles diametrically opposed to those now
held. The third form of the Committee was that which was adopted
when the Prime Minister acceded to his present office. The right
hon. gentleman came to this House and at once explained the new form
of the Committee on March 5th, 1903.... The Committee had heard
to-day the extent to which invasion at home was believed in by the
Defence Committee.... It was firmly expected from the moment that
the Government announced their naval view that the reduction would
be under the military head. But instead of that the reduction had
been on the Navy Estimates, and that had not been accompanied by a
reduction on the army votes. That had been the amazing effect of the
co-ordination. Had any member of the Committee calculated how much
money had been wasted in the last nine and a half years by the
non-adoption in 1895, when virtually the present Government came
into office, of the policy which had been adopted now?"

VII.

The Government which had thus tardily followed Sir Charles Dilke's lead had lost the confidence of the country. The General Election of 1905 gave the Liberals a large majority. Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman, the new Prime Minister, had not forgotten Dilke's vote in the cordite division of 1895, and did not share his view of the necessity to be ready for war, and to rely, not upon arbitration, but upon the organization of defensive preparations. Dilke was not included in the new Ministry, in which Mr. (now Lord) Haldane was appointed Secretary of State for War. Mr. Haldane undertook a fresh reorganization of the military forces of the country, taking the Committee of Defence and the Army Council as they were left by Mr. Balfour after the changes proposed by the Esher Committee. The Order in Council gave the Secretary of State the power to reserve for his own decision any matter whatever, and to impose that decision upon the Army Council, a power not contemplated by the Esher Committee's report. Mr. Haldane availed himself of this power and of the assistance of Colonel Ellison, who had been Secretary to the Esher Committee, but was not a member of the Army Council, to prepare his scheme. It consisted in the organization of an expeditionary force, which was to be composed of six divisions and a cavalry division, with a total field strength of 160,000 men, fully equipped for war, together with additional troops at home to make good the losses of a campaign. This force was to be made up of the regular army (of which the establishments were reduced by some 20,000 of all arms), of its reserve, and of the militia, renamed special reserve, also with a reduced establishment, and with a liability to serve abroad in case of war. The Volunteer force was to be renamed the Territorial force, and its officers and men to be brought under the Army Act, the men to be enlisted for a term of years and paid. It was to be organized, as the Norfolk Commission had suggested, into brigades and divisions. But the further suggestion of the same Commission, that a member of the Army Council familiar with the volunteer system should be charged with its supervision, was not adopted. Mr. Haldane's view was that the territorial troops could not in peace receive a training which would prepare them for war, but that, as England was not a Continental Power and was protected by her navy, there would be six months' time, after a war had begun, to give them a training for war. The force was to be administered by County Associations to be constituted for the purpose. The scheme was gradually elaborated, and in its later stage improved by the transformation of the University and some other volunteer and cadet corps into officers' training corps. The works which, at the suggestion of Sir John Ardagh, had been prepared for the defence of London were abandoned.

Mr. Haldane first expounded his plans in March, 1906, and in the debate of March 15th Dilke said:

"There was a little too much depreciation of the Volunteers; and
although he had always been considered a strong supporter of the
'blue-water' view, yet he had always believed in accepting from the
Volunteers all the service they could give, as he believed they
would give an enormous potential supply of men."

Mr. Haldane explained (February 25th, 1907) that the expeditionary force would require only seventy-two batteries, while the army actually had a hundred and five; there was therefore a surplus of thirty-three batteries which he would use as training batteries in which to train men for divisional ammunition columns. Upon this Dilke's comment was that "if the officer difficulty could be solved, then the real military problem would be solved." We could raise men fast enough through the volunteer system, and turn them into good infantry, provided there was a sufficient supply of officers qualified to train them; but the infantry which could thus be produced in a few months would require to be supplemented by artillery and cavalry which could not be improvised. He would have faced the cost of keeping up these arms, and would not have saved by turning batteries into ammunition columns.

In the debate on Mr. Haldane's Territorial and Reserve Forces Bill (June 3rd), Dilke voted for an amendment of which the purpose was to establish a department at the War Office under an officer having special knowledge and experience with the militia, yeomanry, and volunteers, ranking as third member of the Army Council. This amendment, however, was not carried.

In an article in the _Manchester Guardian_ of June 6th, 1907, Dilke explained his main objections to Mr. Haldane's scheme and to the Bill which was to lay its foundation.

"The cost," he wrote, "must undoubtedly be large, and it is difficult to see where the substantial saving on Army Estimates, twice promised by Mr. Ritchie when Chancellor of the Exchequer, but not yet secured, is to be obtained. As an advocate of a strong fleet, I have a special reason, equivalent to that of the most rigid economist, for insisting upon the reduction in our enormous military charge, inasmuch as the money unexpectedly needed for the army will come off the fleet."

Dilke thought that the defence of Great Britain depended upon the navy; that so long as the navy was equal to its task invasion was not to be feared. The function of the military forces would be to fight an enemy abroad. He, therefore, held it a mistake to increase expenditure on troops which it was not proposed to train to meet foreign regulars. The Territorial army would be the volunteers under a new name, but without an improved training. As the linked-battalion system and the long term of service were retained, the regular army would still be costly, and its reserves or power of quick expansion less than they might be. Mr. Haldane would be compelled to retain a high rate of War Office expenditure, and this would involve a reduction on the outlay for the navy, which was all-important. Mr. Haldane, however, had the support of a very large majority, and argument was of little avail. Sir Charles Dilke therefore threw his weight into the debates on the Navy estimates, in which he consistently supported the Admiralty in every increase.

Year after year he persevered in the effort to counteract the tendency to exaggerate the importance of military schemes and military expenditure, especially upon troops not fully trained and not kept ready for action abroad, and to point out that the effect of such schemes could not but be to reduce the amount of attention and of money devoted to the navy. In 1904 (March 1st) he had said:

"It was an extraordinary fact that, in all calculations on the
subject of the expenditure of the army, the cost of the army outside
the United Kingdom was never taken into account. We were spending
vastly more upon the land services than we were upon our naval
services, and so long as that was so he confessed that he should
view with more than indulgence what was called the extravagant
policy in regard to the navy."

In 1907 (March 5th) he expressed his disapproval of the sweeping change by which the defence of ports by submarine mines had been abolished. "Newcastle had been defended by means of an admirable system of submarine mines which had no equal in the world. So good was it that the volunteer submarine miners of the Tyne division were employed to do the laying of electric mines at Portsmouth and other naval ports. Newcastle was now without that defence." He explained that these mines, which had cost a million, had been sold. Had they fetched £50,000? He was not content with Mr. Haldane's account of the steps taken to prepare for defence against possible raid. On this subject, writing for the _United Service Magazine_ of May, 1908, a paper entitled "Strong at all Points," which enforced his view of the supreme importance of the navy, he said:

"The provision for time of war, after complete mobilization of the
Territorial army, may be perfect upon paper; but the real question
is, how to obtain the manning of the quick-firing guns, say on the
Tyne, in time of political complication, by trained men, who sleep
by the guns and are able to use them when awakened suddenly in the
dead of night."

In the discussion of the estimates of July 31st, 1907, he said that, "bearing in mind the enormous importance in naval matters of a steady policy, he should resist any reduction that might be moved." On the same occasion he pointed out that, "if there was any danger from Germany, it was not the danger of invasion or from the fleet, but it was her growing superiority in the scientific equipment of her people." Yet he declined to encourage panic, and in the debate of March 22nd, 1909, when the Opposition moved a vote of censure because of a supposed unforeseen start gained by Germany in shipbuilding, pointed out the reasons for not indulging in a scare.

Dilke closely watched the new developments in armament and construction, and from time to time pressed them upon the attention of the Government. As early as 1901, in an article reviewing the progress of war in the nineteenth century, he had said: "The greatest change in the battlefields of the future, as compared with those of a few years ago, will be found in the developments and increased strength of the artillery." In 1907, in the debate on the Navy estimates, he suggested that "the reserve of guns was a matter which needed the utmost diligence." Docks, he thought, were proportionately more important than battleships. In 1907 (April 25th) he said: "A base was needed east of Dover--Rosyth or Chatham: he need not suggest or criticize the spot that should be chosen. Whether the Hague Conference prohibited floating mines or not, they would be used; and that being so, they must contemplate either the extension of Chatham or the creation of an establishment at a different point of the east coast." To this subject he repeatedly returned. In 1908 (March 3rd): "The necessity for a large establishment in a safer place than the Channel had been raised for many years, and was fully recognized when Rosyth was brought before them. Both parties had shirked the expenditure which both declared necessary." On March 10th: "There were important works, docks and basins in which big ships could be accommodated, and these by universal admission should be made as rapidly as possible. Big ships were worse than useless if there was no dock or basin accommodation for them.... The limited instalment of one dock and one basin contemplated was only to be completed in eleven years. He believed that was bad economy.... The need for this expenditure had long been foreseen." Again, in 1909, on July 1st, he pointed out that the Governments of both parties had shirked the expenditure on Rosyth, of which the need had been known as early as 1902. The delay had been enormously grave. The report which contained the whole scheme had been presented to Parliament in January, 1902; the land had been bought in 1903, and the contract was made only in March, 1909.

Sir Charles's command of detail made his hearers apt to suppose that he was mainly concerned with technical matters. But no impression could be farther from the truth. Never for a moment did he lose sight of the large issues, and of the purpose to which all measures of naval and military preparation are directed. It was to the large issues that his last important Parliamentary speech on the subject of defence was directed.

"We talk a little," he said on March 7th, 1910, "about the possibility of invasion when we talk of our Territorial army, but we do not--the overwhelming majority of us--believe the country is open to invasion, or that the fleet has fallen off in its power of doing its duty as compared with days past.... No one of us who is prepared to pay his part, and to call upon others to pay their part, to keep the fleet up to the highest standard of efficiency and safety which we at present enjoy--no one of us ought to be prepared to run the Territorial army on this occasion as though it were the main and most costly portion of the estimates that are put before the House. The Territorial army is defensible as the Volunteers were defensible. It is an improvement on the volunteer system, and it might have been made without the statute on which it is based, but that it will add an enormous expenditure to our army is not the case. Our Territorial army, in fact, cannot be kept in view as the first object which we have to consider in the course of these debates.... It is supposed to be the one certain result of the last General Election that there is a large majority in favour of maintaining our naval position; but we cannot maintain that naval position without straining every nerve to do it, and we shall not be able to put all our energy into maintaining that position if we talk about invasion, and tell the people of this country that the fleet cannot do its duty.... If you put the doctrine of invasion so high, and if you tell them that in any degree their safety depends upon the Territorial army trained and serving here at home, then you run a great risk of compromising your naval defence and taking money out of one pocket and putting it into another, and of being weak at both points, and creating a Territorial army which could not face a great Continental force landed on our shores, and at the same time detracting from the power of your fleet.... The Territorial army, like the Volunteers, is really defended by most of us, in our hearts if not in our speech, as a reserve of the regular, expeditionary, offensive army for fighting across the seas.... My right hon. friend Mr. Haldane has always maintained the view that your army and army expenditure must depend upon policy. It is no good fighting him; he has both Houses of Parliament and both parties in his pocket. He is a man of legions political as well as military. The school represented by myself and the dominant school represented by him have differed, not upon the question of policy dictating your armaments, but upon the question of how your policy and your armaments together would work out."

Sir Charles Dilke's last utterance on defence was a review of Sir Cyprian Bridge's _Sea-Power, and Other Studies_, in July, 1910. It was a plea for reliance upon the navy to prevent invasion and upon a mobile military force for a counter-stroke. "I confess," Dilke ended, "that, as one interested in complete efficiency rather than especially in economy to the national purse, I join Sir Cyprian Bridge in asking to be shown, at least, the mobile, efficient, regular force ready for immediate service across the seas."

In the effort of a quarter of a century to have his country prepared for the struggle which was to come Dilke was associated with others, many of them conspicuous for knowledge and zeal; the services of Arnold-Forster, of John and Philip Colomb, and of Chesney, have been too little appreciated by their countrymen. Of their common endeavour Dilke was the chief exponent. At every stage of the movement his was its most characteristic and most comprehensive expression, marking the central line of thought. Some of the dominant ideas were his own. From him came the conception of defence as not merely national but imperial. He first pointed out the true function of the Prime Minister in relation to it. The actual development proceeded along the lines which he drew--a strong navy; a general staff at the War Office; a regular army of first-rate quality, that could be sent abroad at short notice, most likely for the defence of Belgium against attacks from Germany; expansion to be sought, in the first instance, from the numbers furnished by the volunteer system. There were points which he failed to carry--the provision of arms and ammunition for the multitude of soldiers who would be forthcoming from the Empire, as well as of that modern artillery which must play so great a part in a future campaign; the search for generals capable of command in war; the enforcement of the responsibility of Ministers for preparations neglected. What was accomplished and what was left undone give the measure of Sir Charles Dilke as the statesman of Imperial Defence.