178 PEACE ESTABLISHMENTS AND WAR SALARIES. 



the department of war so completely, because of its unholi- 

 ness, its unjustifiableness, in their estimation, that successive 

 war-ministers acquire the power of distributing the war-funds 

 nearly as they please. 



It is not a little strange that practical business-people, as 

 we English profess to be and in all civil relations of life 

 undoubtedly are should have so long allowed the war-organi- 

 sation of the country to rest on such an insecure basis of 

 oppugnant elements and interests as it does: Ostensibly the 

 war-administration is tripartite, there being the war-minister, 

 the commander-in-chief, and the Admiralty. As between the 

 two first, it would not be easy to indicate the precise line at 

 which the functions of the one begin, and those of the other 

 end; nor, indeed, are the responsibilities of the Admiralty 

 nearly so well defined as consideration of naval needs and 

 specialities would seem to suggest. Thus, for example, it 

 might have reasonably been imagined, that the Admiralty 

 would have been allowed to choose the armament deemed 

 most suitable by naval men to naval exigencies. Nothing so 

 reasonable has been conceded. Again and again one may 

 have noted a most unseemly contest between the Admiralty 

 and the Ordnance Select Committee' or rather perhaps say 

 the War-office secret committee, that dominated over the 

 Ordnance Select Committee relative to the sort of ordnance 

 best adapted for naval use. A sort of battledoor-and-shuttle- 

 cock game has been played, to the disparagement of the naval 

 armament and the stultification of the Admiralty. The prac- 

 tical result is, that owing to the influence of the War-office 

 Select Committee, the war-minister has pretty much his own 

 way in the ruling of questions bearing upon the national arma- 

 ment. Is a Briton over-sanguine in expressing the belief that 

 the secrecy of the dominating committee will not be ever im- 

 penetrable ; and that when penetrated, the result may be to 

 demonstrate that the tremendous responsibility now devolved 

 upon it may have been misplaced ? 



