June 27, 19 1 8 Land & Water 7 
Further Progress: By Arthur Pollen 
THE issue of a patent for a new Board of Admiralty 
affords two interesting pieces of information. 
Rear-Admiral Halsey has been relieved and goes 
to a command in the Grand Fleet, after more 
thtin eighteen months of excellent service at the 
Admiralty, and has bepn succeeded as Third Sea Lord by 
Captain Bartolome, an officer of outstanding ability, recog- 
nised in the Service as an acknowledged authority, not only 
on material but on methods of using it, a far more important 
matter. Sir Robert Home becomes Third Civil Lord. The 
change of personnel has been accompanied by a significant 
redistribution of duties. 
When the Admiralty was reformed a year ago, the duties 
discharged in old days by the Third Sea Lord were divided; 
the care of material being entrusted to a civilian. Captain 
Bartolome is now to re-combine the duties of both offices. 
The Controllership is thus once more in naval hands. But 
this does not mean that we have gone back to where we were 
before Mr. Churchill made Lord Southborough Additional 
Civil Lord in igi2. The reorganisation effected by Sir Eric 
Geddes when he was Controller, and the allocation of the 
new Civil Lord, selected for his wide experience of law and 
business, to the administrative, legal, and financial duties 
of the Department, have now made it possible for a naval 
officer to be responsible for warlike material, because he is 
no longer overwhelmed by non-military duties, and is free 
to concentrate on the technical aspect of his work. The 
Controller %vill, in short, become the naval chief of that part 
of the administration responsible for the maintenance and 
supply, just as the First Sea Lord is chiefly responsible for 
all the elements of command. 
It is a development that grows out of the continually 
widening application of the Staff principle, which has been 
going forward in the last twelve months. Since I resumed 
writing in this journal on my return from America, I have 
touched several times upon different aspects of this develop- 
ment and of its very extraordiaary results on the war at sea. 
But 1 find from my correspondence that very wide mis- 
apprehension still exists on this subject. It may, therefore, 
be as well to summarise the actual changes that have been 
made and then attempt a restatement of their significance. 
Mr. Balfour, it will be remembered, left the .Admiralty at 
the end of 1916, immediately after Sir John Jellicoe, Sir Cecil 
Burney and Rear-.^dmiral Halsey had j )ined the Board. Sir 
Henry Oliver was then the Chief of the Staff. It was under- 
stood that, in view of the extreme gravity of the submarine 
menace, Admiral Duff and others were to constitute an 
unofficial staff to assist the First Sea Lord in this matter. 
But the April Na\'y List did not show that any such division 
had, in fact, been created. When this list was issued, then, 
there were four naval members of the Board — omitting the 
Director of Air Service — and five divisions of the Staff, 
Operations, Intelligence, Mobilisation, Trade, and Signals, 
presided over by naval officers. Of these. Operations and 
Mobilisation were alone concerned with the conduct of the war. 
The reforms of May, 1917, made the First Sea Lord Chief 
of the Staff, and the former Chief was added to the Board as 
his. deputy, while Admiral Duff was included also as an 
assistant chief. The other Sea Lords remained as before, 
and an anti-submarine division was added to the War Staff. 
This raised the war divisions to three. Shortly after Sir Edward 
Carson's retirement, the Second Sea Lord became deputy First 
Sea Lord, and three new divisions were added to the Staff, one 
for Plans, one for directing Mercantile Movements, and the third 
for the Training and Direction of Staff Duties. Following on 
the creation of a new organisation, came in January the 
changes in personnel the completion of the refoim required. 
Of the naval officers who were either on the Board or Chiefs 
of Divisions in April, IQ17, all the Sea Lords have retired, 
and ajl except one of the Chiefs of Division. Instead of four 
naval officers on the Board there are now seven, and instead 
of a naval staff consisting of five divisions with a chief, it 
consists of ten divisions, the Chief being the First Sea Lord. 
A year ago the First Sea Lord and the Chief of the Staff 
ran the war. To-day its conduct is distrrbuted over four 
members of the Board and the heads of at least six divisions. 
It is, then, an entirely new organisation, run by entirely new 
men. Further, it includes an element that does not figure 
in the Navy List. Admiral Sims and some of his officers 
are in daily collaboration with the Board, and others are 
actuallv working in certain divisions of the Staff, so that the 
new Higher Command is not only rejuvenated and reformed — 
,it has become international. 
This consummation is one devoutedly wished b\' many of 
us a year ago, and no sane person can now dispute that it is 
from first to last in consonance with right reason. Nor can 
it be disputed that it has been followed by results of an 
extremely gratifying and encouraging kind. The defeat of 
the submarine seems to be going forward with progressive 
efficiency. The attacks on the Flemish ports are far from 
being the only new departures in the narrow seas ; and there 
are many indications of greater activity in the North Sea, 
and of a changed policy in the Mediterranean. All the 
world, allied, neutral and enemy, has borne witness to the fact 
that in the fourth year of the war the British Navy is being 
guided with an inventive initiative and a spirit of offence 
that certainly were not conspicuous in its earlier periods. 
Change of Atmosphere 
This new policy has followed on the creation of a new 
organisation, and its conduct by a new personnel, not because 
individual men in the new organisation are more brilliant or 
more inventive or more warlike than those they have dis- 
placed, but because an entire change has been made in the 
spirit and atmosphere in which the work is done. A year 
ago, after two and a half years of hostilities which had begun 
with all the winning cards in our hand, our game at sea was 
a losing one. We had let the German Fleet escape in the only 
opportunity we had for destroying it and, as a direct conse- 
quence, the German submarines seemed to be in a fair way 
to destroy our sea communications. It was an astounding 
result. It was still more astonishing when it was remem- 
bered that in material strength we had from the outbreak 
of war been overwhelmingly superior, and had for the whole 
period disposed of resources, for building ships and making 
armament and munitions, that e.xceeded those of the enemy 
by many hundred per cent. Clearly, our forces and our 
resources had been grossly misused. The blame fell where 
alone it could fall, namely on Whitehall. Our naval .strategy, 
unlike our strategy on land, had not been shaped in colla- 
boration with the best war brains of our Allies. We 
had learned nothing from our friends and seemingly 
nothing from our foes. At no time had the Admiralty 
been directed by our own best naval brains, and the few 
really able men who from time to time served there, had been 
powerless because of the character of the Admiralty's organis- 
ation. It was one framed on principles entirely unadapted 
either to preparing for war or for conducting it. Wc had 
begun and we went on without the elements that either 
elucidate the principles of right policy or secure their applic- 
ation. The four officers, who were in turn First Sea Lord, 
had been taken from the same group. This group dominated 
naval policy for ten years before war, and showed that they 
had not anticipated the main problems of modern fighting. 
They did not know how to base sea government on the 
knowledge and brain power of the Service they commanded. 
Our sea strategy, therefore, had none of the marks of the 
allied land strategy. It was not international, it was not 
democratic, it certainly was not successful. The auto- 
cratic principle fails because the work to be done is far beyond 
the capacity of one or two or three men, however bfilliant 
and able they may be. Before the simplest war decision 
can be made, a whole situation may have to be analysed, 
the principles that apply to it elucidated, plans made for 
their application, and material specified and personnel 
selectee^. All these operations can only be the work of many 
men. And, unless these co-operate without reference to 
seniority, no useful work can be done. If executive authority 
is employed to establish the fact that an official chief is 
right because he is official, then all work becomes barren and 
useless. It is almost a synopsis of staff organisation that 
reason supersedes rank, and hence the safety of the naval 
state is found only in a republic of brains. The significance 
of the changes still in progress is that it is towards such a 
constitution that wc are tending. There is still much to 
be done. But much has been done alrcadv. 
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