The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke Volume II Part 41

Coming when it did, _The British Army_ made an impression on the educated public. It followed soon after the report of Sir James Stephen's Commission, which had exposed the chaotic condition of the administration of the army. Dilke revealed a grasp of every branch of the subject. His criticisms reflected the judgment of officers familiar with the branch of service discussed. His proposals were modest and intelligible, and in every case represented some body of competent military opinion. He told the public much that none of his readers fully appreciated at the time. The German army had been largely increased in the spring of 1887, and in the beginning of 1888 a Bill pa.s.sed the Reichstag which increased by a further 700,000 men the numbers available in case of war. Dilke explained in one of his chapters that, "according to the calculations of the French Staff, the total number of armed men upon which Germany would be able to draw for all purposes would exceed 7,000,000." [Footnote: The British Army, p. 161.] This and other forecasts may startle those readers whose curiosity tempts them to read the volume again in 1917. But the work produced no practical result except to put Dilke into the front rank of army reformers. The Government took no action to remedy the military weakness which everyone recognized. The report of the Stephen Commission remained a dead letter.

In June, 1888, a new Royal Commission was issued, in which the Marquis of Hartington, a.s.sociated with a number of colleagues of Cabinet rank and with a General and an Admiral, was instructed to inquire into the administration of the naval and military departments. The attempt at reform was postponed until these Commissioners should have made their report.

CHAPTER LV

IMPERIAL DEFENCE

I.

Sir Charles Dilke's visit to India in 1888-1889 convinced him that he had been right in believing the Indian army to be better prepared for war than the portion of the army which was kept at home. A great difficulty he now saw was that there were two rival plans of campaign, the one cherished in India, the other by officers at home. "The greater number of Indian officers expect to march with a large force into Afghanistan to meet the Russians, and believe that reinforcements will be sent from England to swell their armies and to make up for losses in the field. On the other hand, the dominant school in England expect to send an expedition from England, in combination with Turkey or some other allied Power, to attack Russia in other quarters." Dilke was led accordingly to the general conclusion that the one thing needful was "that we should try to remove the consideration of these subjects from the home or the Indian or the Canadian point of view, and should take a general view of the possibilities of Imperial defence."

The attempt to take this imperial view was made in _Problems of Greater Britain_, which Dilke wrote during the remainder of the year 1889. In this work he discussed the defence of the North-West Frontier of India as a prelude to the examination of the defence of the British Empire.

His reason for this separate treatment was that "only on this one of all the frontiers of the Empire the British dominion is virtually conterminous with the continental possessions of a great military Power." He showed that the serious import of this condition was understood by all who knew India well and by both the political parties in England. He dissented from the view that security could be obtained by an agreement with Russia, because it was not easy to see "how Russia could put it out of her own power at any moment to threaten us on the North-West Frontier." The suggestion that Russia should be allowed to occupy the northern portion of Afghanistan he rejected, first because it would have been a flagrant breach of faith with the Amir, and secondly because it would give to Russia territory which she could quickly transform into a base of operations against India.

He thought that Russia could not invade India with a good chance of success if she started from her present frontier, but that if she were allowed to occupy the northern portion of Afghanistan the Indian Government would be put to ruinous expense for the defensive preparations which would then be required. [Footnote: 'Lord Dufferin wrote to me from the Emba.s.sy at Rome to express his satisfaction with the Indian portion of my book, and especially those pa.s.sages in which I demonstrated the exceeding folly of which we should be guilty if ever we consented to a part.i.tion of Afghanistan with Russia.'] He noted that the policy of advance upon our left, which he had recommended in 1868, had been adopted with success, chiefly by the efficacy of the Sandeman system of recognizing and supporting the tribal chiefs and requiring them to maintain order, and also by the occupation and fortification of the position of Quetta and by the opening of roads from Quetta through the Gomul and other pa.s.ses to the Indus at Dera Ismail Khan and Dera Ghazi Khan. This would enable an Indian army to attack the right flank of any Russian force attempting to advance along the Khyber line, which would be resisted in the Khyber hills and at Attock, and be stopped at the fortress of Rawal Pindi. Generally speaking, he held that Indian "defence must be by the offensive with the field army, and the less we have to do with fortifications, the better." He urged the extension northwards of the Sandeman system to all the independent tribes between the Indian and the Afghan borders. If the separate armies for the Presidencies were to be united under a single Commander-in-Chief, as the Indian Government had long desired, and if the principle of enlisting in the native army only men of fighting races were fully adopted, and the native Princes induced to place effective contingents at the disposal of the Government, he thought that India with reinforcements from home would be well able to resist a Russian attack starting from the frontier that Russia then possessed.

But if Russia should once be established at Herat, with railway communications to that point, there would be hardly any limit to the force with which it would become necessary to resist her. He therefore urged that the Russian Government should be given to understand that any advance of her forces into Afghanistan would be regarded by England as a hostile act. At the same time he admitted that it was difficult to see how Russia was in that event to be fought. He still thought that she would be vulnerable at Vladivostock--at any rate until her railway to the Pacific should be completed [Footnote: He considered that, with a view to any future struggle with Russia, the abandonment of Port Hamilton in 1886 by Lord Salisbury had been unfortunate. See, as to Port Hamilton, _Life of Granville_, ii. 440; _Europe and the Far East_, by Sir Robert Douglas, pp. 190, 248]--but he was aware that this view was shared neither by the Indian nor the British officers likely to be heard.

In his chapter on Indian Defence Dilke had exhausted the subject from the Indian point of view. He was fully acquainted with the ideas of all those who had been seriously concerned with the problem, of which he had discussed every aspect with them, and his exposition was complete. When in his last chapter he came to "examine the conditions of the defence of the Empire as a whole, and to try to find some general principle for our guidance," he was to a great extent breaking new ground. The subject had been treated in 1888 by Colonel Maurice, afterwards General Sir Frederick Maurice, in his essay on the Balance of Military Power in Europe, but Maurice based his scheme on the a.s.sumption of a Continental alliance which Dilke thought impracticable. It had also been treated with great insight as early as 1880 by Sir John Colomb in his _Defence of Great and Greater Britain_. His brother Admiral Philip Colomb had more recently expounded the view that the right plan was to make the enemy's coasts our frontier, and to blockade the whole of his ports, so that it would be impossible for his fleets to issue forth. This seemed to Dilke to imply a superiority of naval force which England did not possess, and was not then intending to create. But Sir John Colomb in 1880 had admitted the absolute necessity of being prepared to render invasion impossible by purely military forces. "It was necessary," he had said, "that invasion be efficiently guarded against, so that, should our home fleet be temporarily disabled, we may, under cover of our army, prepare and strengthen it to regain lost ground and renew the struggle for that which is essential to our life as a nation and our existence as an Empire."

Sir Charles Dilke thought this sound sense, and that it was rash, in view of the inadequate strength of the actual navy and of the uncertainty as to the effect of new inventions on naval warfare, to count upon beginning a future war with a repet.i.tion of Trafalgar. He admitted that the navy, if concentrated in home waters, would be fully able to defend the United Kingdom, but that the fleets if so concentrated must abandon the remainder of the Empire, and that this would involve the destruction of our commerce and would be as severe a blow to the Empire as the invasion of England. He inferred that the navy must be the chief agent in defence, but backed by fortification and by land forces. There ought to be squadrons in distant seas strong enough to hold their own, without reinforcements, against probable enemies on the same stations. The coaling ports must be suitably fortified and have all the troops necessary for their garrisons on the spot in time of peace. [Footnote: Autumn of 1889: 'Among those with whom I corresponded about my book was Lord Charles Beresford, who gave me a great deal of information about coaling-stations for my chapter on Imperial Defence, in which I also had Charles Brackenbury's help to a considerable extent.'] He carefully considered the question of food-supply at home and the possibility of a commercial blockade of the United Kingdom. He did not think that such a blockade could be established or maintained.

"Our manufactures would be seriously a.s.sailed, our food-supply would become precarious, but we should not be brought to the point of surrender by absolute starvation, and the possibility of invasion is not excluded, as some of the naval school pretend, by the fact that it would be unnecessary."

"On the other hand, a defeat or a temporary absence of the fleet might lead to bombardments, attacks upon a.r.s.enals, and even to invasion, if our mobile land forces, our fortifications and their garrisons, were not such as to render attacks of any kind too dangerous to be worth attempting. In the absence of the fleet a landing could not be prevented. But the troops landed ought to be attacked. For this purpose we do not need an immense number of ill-trained, badly-equipped, and unorganized troops, but an army completely ready to take the field and fight in the open, supplied with a well-trained field artillery."

But the mere protection of Great and Greater Britain was not enough. "It is idle to suppose that war could be brought to a termination unless we are prepared in some way to obtain advantages over the enemy such as to cause him to weary of the struggle. The _riposte_ is as necessary in warfare as in fencing, and defence must include the possibility of counter-attack." "In view of almost any conceivable hostilities, we ought to be prepared to supply arms and officers to native levies which would support our Empire in various portions of the globe." But we had too few officers for our own troops at home, in India, and in the auxiliary forces. The stocks of arms ought to be larger than they were, and there ought to be centres of production for them in various parts of the Empire. "The moneys that the British Empire spends upon defence are immensely great, and what is wanted is that those moneys should be spent as is decided by the best advisers who can be obtained." "The main thing needed for a joint organization of the whole of the defensive forces of the Empire is the creation of a body of men whose duty it would be to consider the questions raised, and to work out the answers." For this purpose he thought the one thing needful was a General Staff, an inst.i.tution of which he gave a brief account, based on Mr. Spenser Wilkinson's essay _The Brain of an Army_, of which the author had sent him the proofs. "A General Staff," Dilke wrote, "would neither inspect troops nor regulate the promotion of the army, but it would decide the principles which would arrange the distribution of the Imperial forces.... The very existence of a General Staff would const.i.tute a form of Imperial military federation."

II.

In December, 1890, Dilke read before the Statistical Society a paper on the Defence Expenditure of the Chief Military and Naval Powers. He had taken great pains to ascertain what each Power spent on its army and navy, and what return it obtained for its money. The net result was that, while France and Germany for an expenditure of about 28 millions sterling could each of them put into the field a mobile force of two million men, the British Empire, at a cost of 35-1/2 millions, had "a nominal force of 850,000 of various degrees of training wholly unorganized, and supplied only with the professional artillery needed for a force of about 150,000 men." The British navy was more formidable than the French, and "the German navy does not as yet exist. I say 'as yet,' for the Germans mean business with their navy, and have begun, in a businesslike manner, at the top, putting at the head of it their best administrators." The French were spending altogether on defence a total of 36 to 36-1/2 millions, the Germans 38, and the British Empire 57 millions. The moral was that, "whatever the peace expenditure, war cannot be commenced with a fair chance of winning by a nation which waits until war to make her organization perfect. Germany before 1870 prepared in time of peace her corps, her armies, and provided them all with officers for the various commands, who knew what their duties would be in war. All countries spending much on their armies now do the same, except the United Kingdom, which stands alone in having still practically little but a regimental system in existence. But although we are old-fashioned, to the point of being utterly unprepared (except in India) for the stress of war, we nevertheless spend sums so vast as to stagger and amaze even the French and German critics, who ought to be pretty well used, one would think, to large sums for military expenditure." [Footnote: Sir Charles notes in 1893: 'Sir William Harcourt on the British Army: "One knows a man who has ten thousand a year, sixteen horses, and ten carriages, and yet if one guest comes he has difficulty to find a dogcart to meet him, and if two come a fly has to be hired. The British nation also spends its money freely, and has equal difficulty in meeting the slightest emergency."']

Early in 1891 Dilke proposed to Spenser Wilkinson that they should join in writing a new popular book on Imperial Defence. During that year the two men kept up a constant correspondence, and Wilkinson was frequently Dilke's guest in London, at Dockett and Pyrford, and in the Forest of Dean. At Whitsuntide Dilke stayed at Aldershot (where Wilkinson was in camp with his old volunteer battalion, the 2nd Manchester), and went every day to see the regiment at work.

In September, on the eve of Dilke's starting for the French manoeuvres, Wilkinson sent him the draft of an introduction to the proposed book. It challenged the widely-held opinion that war is wicked in itself, and might by political arrangement be rendered unnecessary, and deprecated the abstention from inquiry into its methods which this opinion encouraged. It challenged the maxim 'No foreign policy,' which meant either having no relations with other countries, or, having such relations, conducting them without system. War should be conceived of as imposed upon States by an irreconcilable opposition of purposes, and was always a means to an end. Peace could not be secured by a policy which adopts it as a supreme end. The confusion between defence as a political att.i.tude and defence as an operation of war had led to the neglect, by English public opinion, of all naval and military preparations that might be available for attack. But the essential elements of defensive strength, fleets and armies, were mobile and equally available for offensive operations, and no efficient preparation for defence was possible that would not also serve for attack. Without a clear and true conception of the character of war as a conflict of national purposes, proper conduct of military operations and of defensive preparations was impossible, and to its absence was due the unorganized condition of the defence of the Empire. Dilke, in acknowledging the ma.n.u.script, wrote: "I've read it all and like it, but shall shorten it a little," and in returning the ma.n.u.script, with his modifications, wrote: "The introduction is most excellent--stately and interesting: I can say this, as it is almost all yours." Wilkinson then sent a chapter ent.i.tled "The Primacy of the Navy."

"An attack on land conducted across the sea is a most hazardous speculation so long as there exists anywhere a hostile fleet that is able to fight. In order to make such an attack safe, it is indispensable that the attacker should secure himself from all interruption by destroying or driving from the sea any hostile fleet. The Power which should succeed in doing this would have 'the command of the sea' as against its particular enemy.... The territories of the Power having command of the sea are virtually safe against attack by sea.... The British navy, then, so long as it maintains the superiority at sea is a sufficient protection against invasion for every part of the Empire except India and Canada. If, however, the navy were to suffer decisive defeat, if it were driven to seek the shelter of its fortified harbours and kept there, or if it were destroyed--then, not only would every part of the Empire be open to invasion, but the communication between the several parts would be cut, and no mutual succour would be possible.

"The defeat of the British fleet or fleets would, of course, be effected by purely naval operations; but the acquiescence in its destruction could, perhaps, only be secured by a blow affecting the British power at its source, and therefore the establishment by an enemy of his naval superiority would almost certainly be followed by an invasion of Great Britain. So long, then, as the British navy can be maintained invincible, the Empire could be adequately defended against attack of any European Power other than Russia, and for such a defence, therefore, no more is needed than complete naval preparation, and such military preparation as is required for the full efficiency of the navy. Any additional military preparation is, as against attack of this nature, merely an insurance to cover the possibility of the failure of the navy. After such failure, it might save the British Islands, but it could not save the Empire."

Dilke wrote that this doctrine was the opposite of what he had previously held and preached, and expressed a doubt whether, that being the case, the book could go on as a joint work. Wilkinson replied that the first question was whether the doctrine of the chapter was sound, and that the question of the names on the t.i.tle-page could wait till the work was done.

In _Problems of Greater Britain_ Dilke had discussed the view of Sir John Colomb and of his brother, Admiral Colomb. The Admiral appeared to rely upon "blockade," which required a navy much stronger than Great Britain possessed, and might, with modern weapons and the torpedo, be impracticable of execution, while Sir John Colomb appeared to admit the necessity of purely military forces to prevent invasion. Dilke, looking at the extent of the Empire to be defended, had thought that the concentration of the navy in home waters must involve the abandonment of the rest of the Empire. This is the view usually held by those who are thinking of what they have to protect. Wilkinson thought first of the enemy's forces and how to destroy them. If they can be destroyed, the enemy is helpless and the territories of the victor are safe, because the enemy has no force with which to molest them. On the appearance of _Problems_, Dilke, as the extracts from his Diary at that time show, had begun to doubt whether this view was not the right one; Wilkinson's exposition and the discussion which accompanied it completed his conversion. This was the turning-point of his studies of Imperial Defence.

The next chapter was headed "The Command of the Sea." Here the debated doctrine was applied.

"The purpose of Great Britain to render her territories secure would be perfectly accomplished by the destruction of the enemy's navy, as this would render any attempt at the transport of troops impracticable. The destruction of the enemy's navy would, of course, also be the best possible protection for England's sea-borne trade (though, no doubt, for this purpose additional measures would be required), and for her communications with every part of her Empire.

Thus, in every possible war in which Great Britain could engage, the prime function of the British navy is to attack, and if possible to destroy, the organized naval forces of the enemy."

Suppose the enemy sought battle, the question would soon be decided, but if he wished to avoid it the difficulty would be to find him and to compel him to accept it. For this purpose the best plan was that adopted in 1803 by Lord St. Vincent, which consisted in placing at the outset, in front of every one of the enemy's military ports, a British squadron superior to that which the enemy had within it. This was incorrectly termed "blockade," as the object was not to prevent the issue of the French fleets from their ports, but to prevent their exit unwatched and to fight them when they should come out. This plan must be supplemented by a reserve fleet, and by numerous cruisers to hunt such of the enemy's cruisers as might be at large. The alternative plan of Lord Howe, of concentrating the fleet at one of the home ports, was also discussed, but considered less advantageous, as it left the enemy's fleet free to proceed to sea. But it was shown that the navy of 1891 was twenty battleships short of the number believed by naval officers to be required for the successful adoption of St. Vincent's plan against the French navy alone.

The defence of India was treated in two chapters ent.i.tled "The Peace of India" and "The North-West Frontier," which were in substance a restatement of the view expressed in _Problems of Greater Britain_.

The chapter on "The Armies" was a translation into specific shape, with full details and calculations, of Dilke's idea of a separation between the British and Indian systems. It was argued that the militia and volunteers should be organized into army corps with permanent fully paid commanders and the necessary auxiliary troops, and it was pointed out that the volunteer department of the War Office ought to be entrusted to volunteer officers. A chapter on "The Management of the Home Army"

a.s.serted that "Any system proposed for the better management of the army must satisfy three distinct conditions: It must be framed with a view to the preparation of the army for war; it must secure unimpaired the authority of the Cabinet; and it must provide for an efficient control over expenditure by the House of Commons." The first requirement of a sound system was a general who could be entrusted with the duty of advising the Cabinet upon the conduct of war and with the actual management of campaigns. He ought to have a proper general staff and the field troops at home should be organized into localized autonomous army corps. "The British army at home has no generals, and can have none until its battalions are settled and grouped into brigades, divisions, and army corps." There must be a second general charged with all branches of supply.

Any satisfactory Admiralty system, it was pointed out, would provide a competent naval adviser for the Cabinet. But it was doubted "whether it will be possible to secure unity of design in defence so long as the War Office and the Admiralty are separately represented in the Cabinet. The difficulty would be overcome if it became the practice for one Minister to hold both offices." Dilke had long had the common-sense idea that a single Minister ought to have general charge of all the preparations for war and its conduct by sea and land.

He had made excisions and additions in the chapters as they had reached him, and had closely scrutinized the expression throughout. The whole book was read through by the two men together, and each point discussed to complete agreement. Dilke then proposed that it should appear in Wilkinson's name, as it was substantially Wilkinson's work, and that he himself might write a preface. Wilkinison said that it was a joint work, that the idea of the book was Dilke's, that its substance was the outcome of the intimate exchange of views between them, and that it ought to bear both their names. In his diary Dilke wrote: "Wilkinson's part in it was far greater than mine, though we argued out the whole."

When the book appeared, Admiral Colomb wrote to Dilke: "On reading the introduction and the first and second chapters, I am inclined to sing 'Nunc dimittis,' for, as far as I can understand the matter, you put forward all the views for which I have contended; and coming thus from your hands, I think they will henceforth be current views." Dilke sent the letter to Wilkinson, noting on it: "Colomb thinks _he_ has converted me. I reply, _he couldn't_. You did--after he had failed." He regarded his collaboration with Wilkinson as an intellectual partnership in regard to defence, and hardly ever spoke or wrote on the subject without referring to it.

The development of Sir Charles Dilke's thoughts on defence has now been fully traced and his method of work revealed. His mind was unreservedly open to take in the thoughts of others, and he was incessantly trying to know the best that was thought and said concerning the subjects that interested him. He a.s.similated the substance of a vast correspondence, and on every topic the ideas which he received became a part of him. His intellectual life was thus an incessant dialectic with the best minds of his time. But he never accepted ideas from others without the most generous acknowledgment, and did not, as so many men do, proceed, after a.s.similating another man's thought, to imagine that it was his own invention. This intellectual candour, involving a rare modesty and absence of affectation, was one of his finest characteristics.

CHAPTER LVI

ARMY AND NAVY IN PARLIAMENT

I.

In 1892, when Sir Charles Dilke returned to the House of Commons as member for the Forest of Dean, his mind was made up in regard to the subject of national defence, and from that time on he worked in and out of Parliament to bring about an organization for war of the resources of the nation and of the Empire.

At that time the management of both services was hampered by the acc.u.mulated changes made by three generations of statesmen intent upon home affairs, under which were buried and hidden the traditions of an earlier period of wars. In 1857 the Duke of Cambridge had been appointed Commander-in-Chief in deference to the belief of the Prince Consort, inspired by Baron Stockmar, that in order to avert revolution the royal authority over the army must be exercised through a Prince, and not through the channel of a Minister responsible to Parliament. The Duke thought it his mission to resist changes, and his obstruction had been the bane of successive Ministers. Accordingly, the statesmen of Cabinet rank and experience were anxious at all cost to establish the supremacy of the Cabinet over the army, and for this purpose had welcomed the proposal of the Hartington Commission to abolish the office of Commander-in-Chief whenever the Duke of Cambridge should cease to hold that post. The Commission had not considered that a change of persons might solve the difficulty, and was led astray by the proposal to appoint "a Chief of the Staff," who was to be, not the strategical adviser of the head of the army, but rather its administrator in chief.

In every modern army there is a Chief of the General Staff to a.s.sist the Commander-in-Chief, the princ.i.p.al executive officer, as well as an Administrator-General to manage the business of supply. The Hartington Commission proposed to give the name "Chief of the Staff" to an Administrator-General. It further proposed the creation of a Committee of the Cabinet to hold the balance between the requirements of the War Office and those of the Admiralty.

Dilke recognized as fully as the occupants of either front bench the necessity for the paramount authority of the Cabinet. He also felt the need for co-ordination between the War Office and the Admiralty, and considered that both these needs would best be met by a single Minister, the Prime Minister, supervising or taking charge of both offices. The essence of co-ordination would consist in framing the arrangements for both services with a single eye to victory in war.

Dilke's first step was to get into touch with those members of Parliament who were most keenly interested in the army and navy.

'On February 21st (1893) I had a meeting, which I had suggested, with Lord Wolmer, General Sir George Chesney, and H. O.

Arnold-Forster, and agreed on joint action in all service matters, and to attend the meeting of the service members fixed for the next day, to which, although civilians, Arnold-Forster and I were asked.

We wrote Wolmer's motion for him.'

At this time Campbell-Bannerman was Secretary of State for War. On March 9th the House was to go into Committee of Supply, and on the motion "that Mr. Speaker do now leave the chair" Lord Wolmer moved "that in the opinion of this House the present system of military administration fails to secure either due economy in time of peace or efficiency for national defence." Lord Wolmer in his speech referred to the breakdown in the system of recruiting which had been disclosed in the report of Lord Wantage's Committee. He was supported by Sir George Chesney, who referred to the report of Sir James Stephen's Commission as "a scathing exposure of mismanagement," and to that of the Hartington Commission as "an unqualified and alarming denunciation of our military system."

Arnold-Forster also supported the resolution, in favour of which Dilke made a short and incisive speech. Campbell-Bannerman declined to take the discussion seriously. "The first observation," he said, "that must occur to anyone reading the motion is, What in the world has the report of Lord Wantage's Committee to do with the present system of military administration? It is as if the n.o.ble lord were to call attention to the Tenterden Steeple, and to move that the Goodwin Sands are a danger to navigation." But the breakdown of recruiting was the crucial evidence of the weakness of the military administration.

In September, 1893, the question of the then recent appointment of the Duke of Connaught to the command at Aldershot was raised in the House of Commons by Mr. Dalziel. It was defended by Campbell-Bannerman on the ground that the Duke possessed sufficient qualifications for the post.

If that had been the sole question, said Dilke, he should have supported the Government.

"But there was another point. Aldershot was a training-school not only for the men and regimental officers there employed, but also for the Generals commanding. It might be said to be the only school in the United Kingdom where a general officer could obtain experience in commanding men in battle, and therefore only officers who were likely to command armies in case of serious war ought to be put in command of such a place. Was it likely that the Duke of Connaught, under the circ.u.mstances, would be called upon to take the chief command against a European enemy in case of war?"

In the division Dilke voted against the appointment.