War Cabinet

“ The country is the first consideration, not the Government nor yet the expert.
One great advantage of the War Cabinet system introduced by Mr. Lloyd George was that there was none of this sort of flapdoodle. At a War Cabinet meeting the expert never hesitated to express his opinion, whether he was asked for it or not. The work that I was doing in the later stages of the war did not involve me in problems of major importance, but when summoned to a War Cabinet meeting I never boggled over giving my views as to what concerned my own job. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 leading decision in the administration of the national defence, governing the whole course and character of any future war, is that which settles the total amount of expenditure upon preparation and apportions it between the naval and military services. For this decision the Cabinet is, and must ever be, responsible. Yet in the distribution of the business of the Cabinet into departments there appears to be no office specially entrusted with the consideration of war as a whole, embracing the functions both of the navy and of the army. ”

“ But to-day, in arranging to make war or to make peace, it is the Cabinet— the two or three in the inner Chamber—who take all responsibility upon themselves. As often as not their decision is largely influenced by party questions—and the questions do not depend on the morality of the war, whether the reason for it is a just one or no. ”

“ 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. ”

“ On the civil side the need for an efficient mechanism was if anything greater; for whereas the Service Ministers were all members of the War Cabinet, the majority of civil departments were unrepresented in it. If therefore the separate activities of these departments were to be effectively and continuously focused upon the main objectives of war policy, the War Cabinet must establish bodies vested by devolution with substantial authority. But there did not exist on the civil side the same firm foundation of peace-time organisation ”

“ The theorists of government were in consequence inclined to lament what they considered a departure from true principles. They forgot that the making of a government is a delicate operation in which personalities count as much as the design of a machine. They over-estimated the contrasts, they under-estimated the identities and similarities between the War Cabinets of the two twentieth-century wars. By peace-time standards, the War Cabinet set up in September 1939 was, like its predecessor, very small, and its proportion of non-departmental ministers was large. ”

“ The Imperial War Cabinet developed during the war. It was a meeting of the ministers of the British Government, such as were selected, and of the ministers of the other governments of the Empire, and therefore as regards composition was virtually the same as the Imperial Conference itself. Its chairman was the Prime Minister of Great Britain. ”

“ Thus the Nation in its indifference allowed the fate of its next war to be entrusted to hands not qualified to direct a war, and allowed itself to be deprived of the means of knowing whose advice was being followed in regard to the preparation of its defences. At the same time a Committee of Defence was formed of members of the Cabinet, a committee of untrained men, to settle the broad lines of the Nation's preparations for the maintenance of the Empire. ”

“ The former, to which officers are appointed after a careful sifting, has to make elaborate plans for strategical operations against whatever enemy the German army may have to face; the latter’s task is to organize and improve the forces,111 and to introduce and defend in the Reichstag the war budget and any military measures that may be required. To these two bodies we must add a third, more secret in its workings, less easy to trace, but in certain cases a decisive factor—the Emperor’s war Cabinet. The promotion and retirement of officers is one of its most formidable functions. ”

“ There is a sound instinct that war is a special business, and that it should be managed according to the judgment of those who are masters of the trade; not those who can write about it, but those who have practised it and proved their capacity. But those men, the generals who are, believed to have a grasp of the way to carry a war through, are all outside the Cabinet. The Cabinet has its chosen expert adviser, the Commander-in-Chief ”

“ It did not, however, establish itself as a permanent institution of war government. Some people doubted whether the same body could handle effectively both supply and strategy. [24] There was moreover difficult in finding the appropriate chairman. The office of the Minister for Co-ordination of Defence had been established in 1936 for peace-time duties with the Committee of Imperial Defence; in time of war the Minister had no clearly defined functions. The War Cabinet was the real co-ordinator, and no one but the Prime Minister could be its effective spokesman on defence policy. ”

“ But if war as a branch of the Nation's affairs ought to be entrusted to a man competent in that branch, what about the tradition that any politician of eminence in the party is fit to be the Cabinet Minister at the head of any branch of the public service? ”

“ Why does that disinterested, noble-minded, freedom-loving man in vain ask of the Administration to give him an army to lead into the field?
A voice: Ask Halleck.
Halleck! If Halleck is in the way, dispose of him. (Applause) . Do you point me to the Cabinet? If the Cabinet is in the way of freedom, dispose of the Cabinet (applause) some of them, at least. The magnitude of this war has never yet been fully felt or acknowledged by the Cabinet. The man at its head—I mean Seward—has hardly yet woke up to the reality that we have a war. He was going to crush the rebellion in sixty days. ”

“ It is the singular disgrace of modern England to have allowed the solemn responsibility of war to be tampered with by the arbitrary judgment of executive officers: ... this same nation permits war to be made; lives by the twenty thousand or fifty thousand to be sacrificed ... at the secret advice of a Cabinet, all of one party, acting collectively for party objects, no one outside knowing how each has voted.... The orders to make or not to make war went out direct from the Board of Control—that is, really from the Ministry in Downing Street. ”

“ During the war there developed what was known as the Imperial War Cabinet, a name to which some exception might be taken on the ground that it indicates really more than the assembly actually was. Exception, by the way, was taken to the name on the part of the late leader of the Opposition, Sir Wilfrid Laurier, who was of opinion that "council" would be a more appropriate term than cabinet. ”

“ But the Government has been in power since July, 1895, and has been supported by overwhelming majorities, and it would have had the cheerful acquiescence of the House of Commons for every measure of military precaution and all the military expenditure which was asked. The Cabinet are responsible; but if there is to be any difficulty on account of the existence of a constitutional Opposition—even a weak one—I say that by that doctrine we are fated to be beaten on every occasion we go to war. The time for the reform of our military system will come when this war has ended. ”

“ Obviously, some departments or all of them would have to scale down their requirements and resign themselves to less ambitious programmes of production. Who would persuade them to do this? Who would define the magnitude and proportions of comparative sacrifice? The system of allocation assumed the existence of a central, representative and impartial authority with competence to take decisions in the national interest upon the conflicting claims of rival departments. Such an authority could be derived only from the War Cabinet itself. ”

“ 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 Cabinet is at last a unit. We can stand Germany's insolence and murderous policy no longer. Burleson, Gregory, Daniels, and Wilson were the last to come over.
The meetings of the Cabinet lately have been nothing less than councils of war. The die is cast—and yet no one has seen the message. The President hasn't shown us a line. He seems to think that in war the Pacific Coast will not be strongly with him. They don't want war to be sure—no one does. But they will not suffer further humiliation. ”

“ We would further suggest that the Cabinet should select for each service an officer whose professional judgment commands its confidence, to be at once the responsible adviser of the Cabinet upon all questions regarding the conduct of war so far as his own service is concerned, and the principal executive officer of that service.
We understand by a responsible adviser one who stands or falls by the advice which he gives. He would, of course, have at his disposal, in the formation of his views, the best assistance which the professional staff of the navy or of the army could supply. ”

“ These are properly the subjects of deliberation in which not only military, but civil opinions and interests must be represented; for their definition the Secretary of State will do well to refer to a general council of his assistants, and the ultimate settlement will require the judgment of the Cabinet, and sometimes also the sanction of Parliament. In time of war it is generally necessary quickly to levy extra men, and to drain into the army a large part of the resources of the country. ”

“ The Queen here simply reflected public opinion. Never had a Cabinet of abler men, individually speaking, ruled England since the Ministry of “All the Talents” fell from power. But the Sovereign and her people both forgot that in our strange and anomalous constitution no Cabinet is, as a rule, so weak as a Cabinet of strong men. This Ministry, which started on its career on the flood-tide of Court and popular favour, was destined, by its vacillation in foreign policy, to lead the country into the terrible calamity of a European war. ”

“ I have as little, how a great nation, like Great Britain, will act. Now, I have no doubt, sir, that the American Cabinet view this subject in the same light. They understand well, that by the declaration of war, the invasion of Canada, the refusal of an armistice, and perseverance in hostilities, after the principal ground of war had been removed, they have wrought the minds of the British Cabinet and people to a very high state of irritation. ”

“ The Cabinet became divided as to the mode of carrying on the dispute and the negotiations, some being for what were called vigorous measures, that is, for threats and demonstrations of force which could only lead to immediate war, while others were for exhausting every attempt to bring about an accommodation and preserve peace. ”

“ To set aside the Cabinet which, although it had no legal position, had powers sanctioned and established by long constitutional custom, and to concentrate authority in a small body selected and increased or diminished from time to time at the will of a Prime Minister, was probably necessary for successful prosecution of the War, but nothing else could justify some of the irregularities that have been committed. ”

“ COL. STOREY: Well, it just shows the permeation of the Party and the subordinate agencies, showing they could use the Reich Cabinet for whatever purpose they wanted and to devise laws any way they wanted. They called in these subordinate people, in these subordinate positions, to sit with them when they were passing Cabinet measures. I can also call Your Honors’ attention to the Ministerial Council for Defense. It was supposed to be a ministerial-rank Cabinet meeting; and as I just started to show, they called in SS Gruppenführer Heydrich to this meeting. ”

“ Now, after three ineffectual campaigns on the coast, when the extravagance and ambition of our Government have extended the contagion of war over the Continent; when both our direct offers of peace, and the negotiations and mediations of our allies, have been declined by, or proved unavailing with, the Cabinet of St. James, the inconsistency, the ignorance, and the littleness of the fortunate great man seem to be not more remembered than the outrages and encroachments that have provoked Austria and Russia to take the field. ”