Ministry of War

“ He exercises control of the three regular services through the Ministers of Army, Navy, and Air; he exercises direct control over the Air Defense Command in time of war. There is no minister of defense. The Minister of Interior controls the peacetime administration and employment of the Civil Guard and the Armed Police. However, under the reorganization of the army ministry, which is to be implemented during 1974, the Minister of Army will control the peacetime and wartime administration of the Civil Guard. ”

“ All day on Friday there was very heavy fighting here on the left centre, and a victory was announced by the French Ministry of War.
I did not see the victory. I saw only the retreat of some of the French forces engaged in the battle. ”

“ Sometimes, indeed, the formation of a Ministry seems more like the distribution of loot among successful campaigners, or a tactical disposition of the officers for continuing a contest than the provision of the best means and selection of the best men for each part of the work of governing the country. ”

“ The Ministry of Peace concerns itself with war, the Ministry of Truth with lies, the Ministry of Love with torture and the Ministry of Plenty with starvation. These contradictions are not accidental, nor do they result from ordinary hypocrisy; they are deliberate exercises in doublethink. ”

“ CITIZEN-GENERAL,—The military talents of which you have given so many proofs, and the confidence of the Government, call you to the command of an army. During the winter you have REORGANISED the War Department, and you have provided, as far as circumstances would permit, for the wants of our armies. ”

“ The army must be the rallying point; the army must furnish example, must furnish instruction, must give us the principles on which that national system [Pg 267] of defence must be formed; and by which the voluntary forces of this country, though in a military view inferior to a regular army, would, fighting on their own soil, for everything dear to individuals and important to a State, be invincible.'
These quotations will, I think, give a general idea of the views which were uppermost in the mind of the Minister for War when he gave vitality to the principle of localisation. ”

“ The administration asserts the right to fill the ranks of the regular army by compulsion. It contends that it may now take one out of every twenty-five men, & any part or the whole of the rest, whenever its occasions require. Persons thus taken by force, & put into an army, may be compelled to serve there, during the war, or for life. They may be put on any service, at home or abroad, for defence or for invasion, accordingly to the will & pleasure of the Government. The power does not grow out of any invasion of the country, or even out of a state of war. ”

“ It had become the practice of the War Department to present to the army every five years a comprehensive military problem involving an imaginary attack upon this country by a powerful foreign foe, and the proper line of defense. The competition was open to both officers and men. ”

“ It is hardly necessary to observe that no civilian minister, however deeply he might have studied the art of war, could be expected to solve for himself the strategic problems which come before him. In default of practical knowledge, it would be as impossible for him to Duties of the War Minister. decide where garrisons should be stationed, what fortifications were necessary, what roads should be constructed, or how the lines of communication should be protected, as to frame a plan of campaign for the invasion of a hostile state. ”

“ For, other things being equal, the first duty of a soldier is the care of his own army. In our country it seemed the wisest course for the War Cabinet to leave all important military decisions to the military chiefs. The previous Government, indeed, had fortified the Generals with an Order in Council which practically gave them strategic control. ”

“ The traditional practice of having a civilian Minister inside the Cabinet with all the authority, and a soldier with all the knowledge outside the Cabinet, was devised for electioneering purposes, and not for war. ”

“ The Minister for War, who must be a general officer, has charge of the military administration of an army lately fixed at 6,000 men, and the chief control of men and matters in the army, and is to exercise supervision over army divisions, and all buildings and forts under his Department. ”

“ But he was to be the adviser or assistant, not of a military commander, but of a civilian governor-general of the army.
An army cannot be directed in war nor commanded in peace under the immediate authority of a civilian. There must be a military commander, the obedient servant of the Government, supported by the Government in the exercise of his powers to discipline and direct the army, and sheltered by the Government against all such criticism as would weaken his authority or diminish its own responsibility. ”

“ Although it is frequently stated that our army is fit to cope with the army of any Foreign Power it is evident that the War Office itself is not quite satisfied, and reforms are instituted from time to time. ”

“ You cannot expect a Cabinet of twelve or eighteen men ignorant of war to create a good war-fighting machine. You cannot entrust the organisation of your Army to any authority but the Government, for the body that creates your Army will govern you. The only plan that will produce the result required is to give authority over the making and using of the Army to a man or men who understand War—War as it is to-day. In short, a Nation that is liable to War requires men of War in its Government, and, in the case of Great Britain, the place for them is in the Cabinet. ”

“ The commanders of the British, American, German, French, Italian, Russian, Austrian and Japanese detachments have met and conferred—each carefully instructed by his own Minister just how far he is to acquiesce in his colleagues' proposals, which is, roughly speaking, not at all. We can have no effective council of war thus, because there is no commander-in-chief, and everybody is a claimant to the post. ”

“ Although, as I have tried to explain, its system of administration is not altogether adapted to meet the requirements of parliamentary government, and although in some respects the Navy and Army are not in such close association as seems desirable, still these defects are capable of remedy, and, at all events, are in no way attributable to the chiefs of the various departments, military and civil, of the War Office, who are men of the highest character and experience, [Pg 294] and who carry out very difficult duties with loyalty and success, even under a somewhat imperfect system. ”

“ The Standing Committee of the National People's Congress shall, pursuant to the Constitution, decide on the declaration of a state of war, decide on general national mobilization or partial mobilization, and exercise other constitutional national defense functions and powers. ”

“ They have another feature in army administration which we would do well to emulate. On the theory perhaps that a cat may look at a king, the lowest may address the highest. The official ear and mouthpiece of the War Department is the military secretary. ”

“ A large force of volunteer officers must be kept up in a time of peace,—which is contrary to the jurisprudence of all highly civilized nations,—or the volunteer officers must be mustered out, and thus leave an important arm of the war department without the necessary administrative government. ”

“ My belief is that, if ever the history of our military administration of recent years comes to be impartially written, it will be found that most of the large reforms, which have beneficially affected the army, have been warmly supported, and sometimes initiated, by the superior civilian element in the War Office. ”

“ Among these, my impression is that a state of war, whether foreign or domestic, may exist, in the great perils of which it is competent, under its rights and on principles of national law, for a commanding officer of troops under the controlling government to extend certain rights of war, not only over his camp, but its environs and the near field of his military operations. ”

“ The chief of the hostile government, the monarch and members of the hostile reigning family, male or female, the chief officers of the hostile government, its diplomatic agents, and all persons who are of particular and singular use and benefit to the hostile army or its government, are, if captured on belligerent ground, and if unprovided with a safe conduct granted by the captor’s government, prisoners of war. ”

“ The man in the street might do well to consider whether the great departments of Government, such as the War Office and the Army, should for ever be entrusted to men who have not even a nodding acquaintance with the business which their departments have to transact, the business called War. ”

“ Parliament maintains another important check, in the shape of the Annual Army Bill, an act passed at the commencement of every session, investing the crown with powers to make regulations for the government and discipline of the army under what are known as the Articles of War. Administrative control is vested in a secretary of state for war, to whom the heads of all departments are responsible in the discharge of their duties. ”

“ If, however, the Right Honorable Gentleman should say to me, 'Where else would you put that Noble Lord, would you have him appointed War-Minister again?' I should say, Oh no, by no means,—I remember too well the expeditions to Toulon, to Quiberon, to Corsica, and to Holland, the responsibility for each of which the Noble Lord took on himself, entirely releasing from any responsibility the Commander in Chief and the Secretary at War. ”

“ This, as long as there exists no cause of complaint common to the whole army, will be sufficient to preserve tranquillity. In the mean time, due attention should be paid to the manly representations of the Minister of War respecting the mode in which the army is at present recruited, and the greatest pains taken to prevent the ranks from being filled with the scum and refuse of society, with which the States but too often supply the deficiencies in their legal Contingent. ”

“ The command of the military forces in time of peace shall be entrusted, according to special law, to the Chief of Staff, and in time of war to the person designated by the President of the Republic, with the advice of the Cabinet and the approval of the Grand National Assembly. ”

“ The chiefs of these bureaus are under the immediate orders of the Secretary of War, who, through them, in fact commands the army from "his office," but cannot do so "in the field"--an absurdity in military if not civil law. ”

“ The lesson which his practice may teach every Government engaged in war is, that while the Statesmen alone can direct all the Departments of State, and combine Navy, Army, Diplomacy, and Finance to the common end, those responsible for the actual operations must be unfettered in their decisions, and in their method of carrying them out. ”

“ From the reports herewith communicated of the Secretaries of War and of the Navy, with the subsidiary documents annexed to them, will be discovered the present condition and administration of our military establishment on the land and on the sea. The organization of the Army having undergone no change since its reduction to the present peace establishment in 1821, it remains only to observe that it is yet found adequate to all the purposes for which a permanent armed force in time of peace can be needed or useful. ”

“ My unpopular belief that nobody should meddle with the management of a war unless he understands it is, I admit, most uncomfortable, for as a war is always managed by the Government I am obliged to think that every Government ought to understand war. But in this country the Government is entrusted to a Committee of Peers and Members of Parliament, none of whom is supposed to be able to take a military view of war. If my belief is right, a British Cabinet is very liable to take a civilian view, and the consequences might be awkward. ”

“ The military organizations, such as companies, regiments, brigades, divisions, corps d'armée, are always kept up; the officers are ever ready, and in case of war it is only necessary to call in the men. ”

“ Governments have not always been wise in their control of the Military Commander or in their direction of operations. Glaring instances may240 be found in history, notably in the conduct of war by the younger Pitt, by the Aulic Council in Vienna, and by Abraham Lincoln. ”

“ The beginning of wisdom with respect to all problems of defence is the recognition of the two-headed principle that Policy depends on Armaments just as certainly as Armaments depend on Policy.
The duty of the Admiralty and the War Office is to keep their armaments abreast of the national endeavour. ”

“ Time and the progress of events brought to the Department other and more important matters than the clerical work of correspondence and keeping records, and the work not only of obtaining and preserving all manner of army supplies, but of providing for their production, led to the establishment of minor agencies, each one as it was brought into existence, adding to the functions of the Secretary of War, and giving him a superior directing authority. ”

“ Even those of them which have, in other respects, coupled the chief magistrate with a council, have for the most part concentrated the military authority in him alone. Of all the cares or concerns of government, the direction of war most peculiarly demands those qualities which distinguish the exercise of power by a single hand. The direction of war implies the direction of the common strength; and the power of directing and employing the common strength, forms a usual and essential part in the definition of the executive authority. ”