But they are not more abreast of the times, nor cleverer, nor more scientific, nor better in touch with current problems in their practical aspects than are the best of their juniors. These are days of progress and discovery in all walks of life; and in a service like the Royal Navy progress must be very rapid, and every new discovery must be turned to account without delay if it be applicable to the conditions of war afloat. To say that this is a young man's job would perhaps be to go too far; but it is work for the comparatively young man in preference to the man past middle age. The serious character of the submarine menace is well known, and it is also well known that a conviction is entertained by a proportion of naval officers of the commander and lieutenant type that the best means of coping with this peril are not being employed. This is the business of the War Staff, and the idea suggests itself that those at the head of this branch of the Admiralty might well take closer counsel than they do with the younger generation. If the War Staff were broken up into sections and subsections, with clearly defined duties, and if the subsections were allowed a reasonable amount of responsibility and liberty of action, these desirable relations between the head and the tail would be brought about automatically.

But the arguments that can be adduced in favour of establishing an enlightened system of decentralization in a great public Department of State like the Admiralty are not based solely on the fact that under it the brain-power of juniors can be effectively tapped. Decentralization relieves principals of an immense amount of work of secondary importance, and thus enables them to devote their attention to the things that really matter. Now it is notorious that until quite recently successive First Sea Lords have allowed themselves to be smothered under piles of voluminous correspondence concerning matters that they ought never to have troubled themselves about at all. Considerable improvement seems to have been effected in this respect under Sir E. Carson's beneficent regime. The late First Lord devised a better balanced distribution of duties, and he fitted Sir J. Jellicoe out with an assistant, having a seat on the Admiralty Board, whose business apparently is to grapple with a number of administrative problems which before his advent absorbed some of the energies

of the First Sea Lord. The First Sea Lord has, moreover, been definitely placed at the head of the War Staff, making his position analogous to that of Sir W. Robertson at the War Office. An alteration has also very recently been made in the standing and in the functions of the Second Sea Lord. These reforms have been introduced with the object of remedying some of the obvious defects in an indefensible system, but it seems doubtful whether they have gone far enough and whether Admiralty conservatism will allow them to accomplish their purpose.

Tradition dies hard in the Services. Moreover, naval and military officers alike are for the most part centralizers in practice, even when they worship at the shrine of decentralization in theory. Matters are made worse on the professional side of the Admiralty by the profound respect that is paid to seniority in naval circles. When sailors of long and distinguished service join the Board, they find it hard to realize instinctively that not only is it unnecessary, but that it is positively undesirable, for them to know all that goes on in the particular branch that they happen to control. Furthermore, if they insist on keeping all the strings in their hands, they cannot possibly grapple effectually with the vital problems that have to be solved. There is nothing worse than for public servants holding highly responsible positions to be overworked, and this assuredly applies to the case of men who have to direct naval operations, or who are controlling naval policy, in the course of a stupendous war. If any single one of the Sea Lords at the present time sits in his office, or is actually engaged on duties of a sedentary kind, for more than eight hours a day, then there is something wrong and Sir E. Geddes should see to it.

Tradition at the Admiralty does not clog the wheels merely in respect to its fostering centralization and to its restricting the full use of available brain-power. It has taken years for My Lords to perceive the need of a properly constituted War Staffif they perceive it yet. Nor does one feel sure that such an organization, framed on the lines of the General Staff of the Army, would not be regarded with the gravest suspicion by the older school of naval officer in general. Soldiers high up in the War Office, and many senior generals in the Army, were exceedingly obstructive, it may be remarked, during the period between

1904 and 1909 when the General Staff was gradually being evolved. Nobody in the military world questions its value now, and progressive naval officers are well aware that the absence of a corresponding organization in the Senior Service has proved injurious to the conduct of operations at sea during the present war. But to create a workable War Staff system outside of the Admiralty itself during the progress of a world-wide conflict is, needless to say, entirely out of the question. That consummation must be awaited until hostilities are at an end. When the time is ripe the younger generation of sailors must see to it that the "Brain of the Navy" is given a proper start.

Although the title "War Staff" is not an altogether happy one, it would be difficult to devise a better. When all is said and done, the military term " General Staff" will not stand close examination either; but it serves its purpose, thanks to the duties and status of the organization having been clearly defined. The War Staff of the future will not deal only with operations of war actual and contemplated; their study and their execution will be, as at present, the function of one branch of the central organization in Whitehall, the Operations Division. The War Staff will also supervise higher training, will provide appropriate literature on Service subjects, and will naturally control and conduct the Naval Staff College which must arise when the war is over. The same division of the War Staff in the Admiralty which deals with training would naturally grapple with the problem of naval tactics as a matter of theory-in so far as naval tactics were illustrated at the Jutland fight the problem of controlling a number of squadrons in a fleet action strikes a soldier as being one crying aloud for intelligent solution. Ramifications of the War Staff extending throughout the squadrons and fleets composing our floating forces will have charge of carrying out staff duties on behalf of the admirals and commodores commanding, and the personnel will have their work cut out for them in early days to introduce some method into these. How far the development of scientific investigation and research should be actually under the direct control of the War Staff may prove difficult to decide; but it is worth noting that the General Staff Department at the War Office, while keeping an eye on such matters, does not take executive charge of the committees and boards and

official inventors in whose hands the service reposes. It only remains to be added that the Intelligence Division of the Admiralty, a highly efficient branch of old standing, has but to continue its progress on the present satisfactory lines to become a most powerful instrument for furthering the labours of the War Staff as a whole. Always provided that they are not opposed and obstructed in high places, the future constructors of a War Staff that will be abreast of the conditions of the hour ought not to find the task to be one beyond their resource and their capacity.

Promotion in the Royal Navy is, no doubt, a subject somewhat outside that of actual Admiralty organization. But, inasmuch as reference has been made in some of the foregoing paragraphs to the checks which prejudice and custom place upon utilizing existing ability in the junior ranks, it may not be out of place to comment briefly on the absence of an effective machinery for securing young flag-officers to the Royal Navy. Gough, Horne, Milne, and Maude were all four still colonels in August 1914. To-day they are substantive lieutenant-generals, each one of them at the head of a host more than double the strength of the composite army which fought under Wellington at Waterloo. This has been made possible by their promotion to the rank of major-general, out of their turn, for their services with the original Expeditionary Force. They were then placed in charge of divisions and afterwards of army corps; they were tried and not found wanting, were promoted a second time for distinguished service, and so it comes about that our great armies in the field are commanded by men in the prime of life. They are supernumerary to establishment; there are numbers of other general officers similarly situated, and for the same reason; being outside of establishment they do not block the advancement of seniors and contemporaries, who continue their progress under normal seniority conditions. This sensible arrangement was introduced by Lord Wolseley about a quarter of a century ago, and it ought to be adopted in the Senior Service.

Before concluding, some reference may be made to a branch of the Admiralty which is not without its importance, although it has for years past enjoyed a somewhat undue prominence in Whitehall. Before the reconstitution of the War Office was taken in hand by the Esher Committee there used to be a Permanent

Under-Secretary of State, who had his finger in every pie and who was for all practical purposes the superior of anybody in the place except the War Minister and the Commander-in-Chief. His minutes adorned files of correspondence concerned with purely professional subjects. Nothing could be done without his approval and concurrence. It was not, be it understood, a case of megalomania afflicting an ambitious servant of the public; it merely represented the inevitable outcome of an office system that was entirely inappropriate to a Department of State governing one of the fighting services. The Esher Committee ruthlessly stripped the P.U.S. of his prerogatives and reduced him to the position of simple head of the secretariat, charged with the duty of signing the official letters prepared by the branch concerned with the subject at issue and of acting as principal of the chancellerie. The Secretary to the Board of Admiralty has never enjoyed an authority quite on all fours with that with which the P.U.S. was invested in the heyday of his fame. But he has been a good deal more than a mere secretary. If report speaks true the powers of this permanent official either have been, or are about to be, appreciably restricted, and it is to be hoped that this story will turn out to be correct.