May 17, 1917 
LAND & WATER 
Admiralty Reforms 
By Arthur Pollen 
Glendower : / can call spirils fjom the vusly deep. 
lIorsPUK : Why, so can I , or so can. any man; but will they 
come when von do call lor them ? 
Ileniy IV. — Part 1.— Act 3. — Scene I. 
ON Muiiday afternoon Sir Edward Carson announced 
certain changes in the Board of Admiralty, and an 
official statement of tlieir twofold object suggests 
the broad lines on. which tlie work of the several 
members will be distributed. From this we gather that the 
First Sea Lord will have associated with him as responsible 
colleagues— instead of merely as advisers — ^the two chief 
members of the present naval staff, so that Sir John Jellicoe, 
Sir Henry Oliver and Rcar-Admiral Duff are to be free — ■ 
not entirely, be it noted, but as far as possible — from admini- 
strative work, in order that they may concentrate their 
attention on the naval conduct of the war, Major-General 
and Vice-Admiral Sir Eric Geddes joins the Board as head of 
a naval Ministry of Munitions. Rear-Admiral Halsey 
becomes Third Sea Lord, and will pi'esumably be responsible 
for advising Vice-Admiral Geddes as to the technical require- 
ments of the construction and manufacture desired by the 
navy. V'ice-Adiniral Burney remains Second Sea Lord and 
Rear-Admiral Tothill becomes Fourth Sea Lord. The naval 
staff outside the Board is to be strengthened by the addition 
of officers transferred from the active sea service. 
These changes have undoubtedly been brought about by 
the recent awakening of the public mmd to the deplorable 
scale and gravity of our naval failure. This failure has been 
discussed in these columns from week to week now for many 
months ; and the conjunction of " Flag-Officer's " letter with 
the unexpected doubling of the submarine successes, brought 
nrntters to a head. In this issue is printed a series of ex- 
tracts from the press, from letters of various naval authorities 
and from speeches in Parliament, setting out this cumulative 
indictment against Whitehall, the chief reasons — personal 
and organic — for the inefficiency displayed, and the remedies 
that have been proposed. How far do the reforms announced 
by the First Lord meet the case that has been made ? The 
case is briefly as folJows : 
(i) The navy has failed in its fundamental business — the 
defeat and destruction of the enemy's fleet. 
(2) Because it has failed in this, it has also failed to protect 
our sea supplies. 
(3) Both failures arose from the fact that the supreme 
command has since 1904 been monopolised by a group of_ 
officers who have prepared the navy for war and guided and 
commanded it in war on wrong military principles. 
(4) That these wrong principles may be said p*rtly to 
ha'W grown out of a wrong system of administration and 
partly to have created it. 
(5) The principal evil of the system was that it failed to 
discriminate between the military function of command and 
the civil business of construction, manufacture and supply. 
To deal with these evils it was proposed : 
(i) To revert to the old system of governing the navy by 
two distinct Boards, the first a Board of Admiralty to com- 
mand, the second a Board of Supphes. 
(2) To appoint to the Board of Admiralty only officers 
whose known principles and record assured the adop- 
tion and execution of an active offensive on right military 
lines. 
It will be seen that the changes made do not. in any part, 
achieve the whole programme proposed in Parliament and 
elsewhere. The navy, for example, still remains subject to 
' a single Board of Admiralty. But it is obviously not a 
Board which has jointly to consider and to adopt all the 
vital decisions which have to be made, so that each member 
should be jointly and severally responsible for them. We 
began the war with four Naval Lords and five Civil members 
of the Board. There are now seven Naval Lords, one new 
Lord naval by adoption, and the five civil members as before. 
If we count Sir Eric Geddes as a civilian, there are seven 
naval officers to six laymen. This body is too large and the 
business too great and various for joint action and several 
responsibility to be possible. Wc must infer froiii Sir Edward 
Carson's statement that, in spite of constitutional unity, there 
is to be a functional division. This is perhaps as near the 
establishment of two separate Boards as the actual state of 
naval administration permits. Probably no more drastic 
reorganisation is possible in war time. So that the substance 
of the differentiated control may btf really achieved. The 
best guarantee of this achievement lies in the personality, of 
the new Controller. There is., no man in England who has 
been tried in more diverse or more difficult tasks, or who ])as 
passed each trial with more perfect and assured success. ,It 
has been said that the iwvai Lords have been constantly 
thwarted in the attainment of their military objects by the 
ill-organised machine tluough which they have had to work. 
No such difficulty will obstruct the new " honorar)? aud 
temporary " \'ice-Admiral. The man who knows precisely 
what he wants done nm). how it should be done, knows also 
how to remove obstruction from whatever quarter it may 
come. 
The first of the reforms demanded in these columns a,nd 
elsewhere - namely, a dividing line between the civil and the 
military at Whitehall, is likely then to be realised in fa^ct. 
And this is great gain for obvious reasons. Tlie Government 
conceded a very high proportion of the supply of raw material 
and of the resources of the countrj- in shipbuilding, engineer- 
ing and manufacture to the -Admiralty from the very first days 
of the war. This vast monopoly has never been disputed 
by the army or by the Munitions Department, for, in tjiis 
matter, no one has ever questioned the prior claims of ,t,he 
navy in a war in which sea power should be decisive. But 
it has for a long time been very questionable whether the 
Admiralty has put this monopoly to good use. It has inclosed 
been almost unquestionable that it has not done so. Nor 
would it have been reasonable to have expected so great a 
miracle, W'c have made enormous efforts in recent years 
to turn some of our ablest nj^val officers into civilian admipi- 
strators — and not entirely without success. But no officer 
so -converted had ever attqnpted the task set to Rear-Admiral 
Tudor. It is not surprising, therefore, if the rate of supplvjof 
small craft, mines and other things necessary for fighting 
submarines, bears no relation to that at which materiel is 
furnished to the army by the Munitions Ministry. And, as 
the efficiency of the anti-submarine work depends very 
largely 'upon the numbers of units and the abundance of 
materiel, the assurance that supply is now in the most efficient 
possible hands is of immense military moment. 
Vice-Admiral Geddes 
' Briefly, then, the inclusion of Vice-Admiral Geddes in the 
Board should have two results of inestimable value. First, 
■we shall get much needed materiel ia.r more quickly. Sccoudl\-, 
in getting this he will have to speed up and simplify the 
■.Admiralty departments through which he works, so that Ave 
shall be left with a far more efficient administrative machine. 
But, great as is the value of this much-desired materiel 
and important as are all administrative reforms, the main 
object of the Admiralty critics was that the military command 
should be as different as it could possibly be from that which 
has held sway at Whitehall hitherto. Do the present reforms 
secure this ? There are voices,, in the press that are extra- 
ordinarily confident. The Daily Chronicle, for instanci;, 
which, amongst the daily press has led the criticism, now 
holds up these changes. as a final and complete triumph of the 
right. It is not content to say that the naval administration 
•has been .put on to more scientific lines. It tells us that these 
changes embody exactly the principle for which it has been 
contending — the establishment at the .Admiralty of, a 
' V fighting body, " equivalent to the General Staff at the War 
' Office. Now a fighting body is undoubtedly what we have, all 
■Ijeen' crying for. But the body presented to us is, so far as 
■persons. arc concerned, exactly the same as that which, 
.' since December last, has been directing the manifold opera- 
. ■'tions of the fleet. The only difference in its constitution is, 
-that two officers who were formerly the First Sea Lord's 
'^ Advisers only, now become his colleagues and, we must suppose. 
II ijointly responsible with their chief for the policy recommended 
•' toithe Government. How far does this carry us towards the 
DaOy Chrqnicle's.principlG} ■ ■■ '■ 
'. Until these changes were made, the First Lord alono was 
' the ' responsible adviser of the Government. Our policy, 
tvhatever it was, was then his policy — unless indeed he was 
intent to have it overborne by others, or made nugatory by 
inefficient subordinates. If it was not enough^ of afightijag 
policy, would it not seem that its defects were those of its 
originator ? This jouinal and the Daily Chronicle were 
