be doubted whether a service which had wandered for forty years in the barren deserts of technical knowledge could supply the capital of intellect necessary for the conception and initiation of a naval staff on the scale of modern war. The brains of the navy had been mortgaged almost irretrievably to technical subjects; gunnery, torpedoes, wireless, and ship administration were all sufficiently studied, or at least received a large measure of attention, but in the spheres of strategy and tactics little progress had been made.

It may be said with a large degree of truth that between 1830 and 1880 the words 'strategy' and 'tactics' passed out of naval vocabulary and were lost. One or two men like Sir Geoffrey Hornby and Philip Colomb sought for them, but they were not to be found. The dawn of a new era came between 1880 and 1890, and found its first expression in the Intelligence Department, instituted about 1886, and later in the War College, which started about 1900. The development of these institutions would require a book in itself. The Intelligence Department was the forerunner of the Naval Staff, but it lacked a school of staff training, made no effort to compete with the great technical schools for the best brains of the community, neglected the vital principle of differentiation between Operations and Administration, and sank more and more into the position of a mere handmaid for the collection of data and the making of translations from the foreign press. The War College, which was started largely on the initiative of the late Rear-Admiral Henry May, supplied an element of organised instruction, but there was still no real Naval Staff; and the older admirals, wedded to the methods of individualism and centralisation, strongly opposed it.

The Agadir incident in 1911 revealed the bankruptcy of the no-staff system. Under the system of centralisation a great plan' was concocted, possibly very remote from reality and entirely independent of the other great departments of State. It was kept carefully secret, ready to be revealed at the critical hour. The critical

• It first appeared in the Navy List in 1887, but a Foreign Intelligence Branch had been started about 1883.

hour came in 1911. The secret safe was opened and was found to contain a military campaign of which the General Staff had never heard. According to common report it included a landing on the Frisian Islands-a long, low sandy group of islands fringing the German coast. The General Staff protested against it as inconceivable. What was the army going to do when it had landed on the Frisian Islands? Their arguments were irrefutable, and the broken shards of the plan drifted away, carrying much wreckage with them. A new Board was then created and a War Staff instituted. Unfortunately it had no commanding intellect like Lord Haldane's to watch over its cradle. Mr Winston Churchill supplied enthusiasm and energy, but he had never made a deep study of staff organisation, and his task was a difficult one. In spite of difficulties, however, he accomplished a great deal, and established the beginnings of a staff system. The term 'Staff' was introduced, and a Chief of the War Staff was appointed to co-ordinate the work of the three divisions of Intelligence, Operations, and Mobilisation, which were usually as intent on a war with one another as with the enemy. A system of training staff officers and a Staff Course were instituted, and had been in existence for two years when the war broke out; but the number of trained Staff officers were still insufficient, and this insufficiency was felt most acutely in the Admiralty. All the competent officers were snowed under with work. There was too little time for the present, less for the future, and none for the past.

From the very first day of the war the War Staff proved entirely insufficient in numbers to cope with the work to be done. The method of conducting the business had not been studied. On the first day of war a number of sections were bundled into a large room called the War Room, with the idea that they should be as close as possible to one another. The scene there, according to a trustworthy report from an eyewitness, may be compared with the state of things in the Grand Quartier at Metz in 1870, as described by General Fay:

'Never shall I forget the disorder and confusion which reigned in that room, its doors constantly opening to give passage to our chief, and strangers seeking the most futile

information. Orders and counter-orders literally collided with one another; the smallest telegraph despatch gave rise to feverish excitement entirely incompatible with that absolute calm which is one of the first essentials of a good staff.' Admiralty experience and Mr Winston Churchill came to the rescue, and the War Registry was evolved. But there was still no division charged with the preparation and investigation of large plans. The Operations Division dealt with current work, but it was not possible for a Division loaded with the actual conduct of current operations to spend more than a very limited proportion of its time in the preparation and examination of schemes which might require three months' work to reduce merely to terms of time and supply. Committees are inefficient instruments for the purpose, for they rarely possess the capital of experience and information which a permanent Division accumulates. Again, plans for the future must be kept in close touch with the present on to which they must be grafted; and those working at them must be in close touch with the Operations Division of the Staff.t

The result was painfully evident in the first year of the war, when the pressure of work in the Operations Division did not permit of an intensive investigation of big strategical questions lying beyond the horizon of immediate current work. The Dardanelles operations afford a conspicuous example of the possibility that, in an imperfect staff system, an energetic mind will override staff opinion, and of the inability of a 'division' absorbed in current work to cope with big questions requiring an immediate and decisive answer. Here an immense strategical effort was set on foot, based on a purely hypothetical and vastly exaggerated estimate of the bombarding capabilities of the Queen Elizabeth's' guns, an estimate unsupported by a single naval artillerist of repute. With no Plans Division to check it, the effort gathered way till it covered half the strategical

A committee, if it fulfils a necessary and permanent function, tends to become a 'division,' as in the case of the Foreign Intelligence Committee of 1883, which became the Intelligence Department, and the Signal Committee of 1912, which became the Signal Section and later the Signal Division.

↑ Compare Lord Jellicoe's 'Crisis of the Naval War,' p. 16.

horizon and vied in importance with the Grand Fleet itself.

In 1916, when the menace of unrestricted submarine warfare hung darkly over our naval position, Lord Jellicoe came to the Admiralty. He diagnosed correctly the deficiencies of the staff system then in force; and the changes made by him in 1917 were of primary importance. First of all, the office of Chief of the Naval Staff was merged with that of First Sea Lord. This was apparently a very simple measure, but it was one of great import, for it not only gave the Naval Staff a definite position on the Board but attached it to the principal naval member. The addition of a Deputy Chief and an Assistant Chief of the Naval Staff, with seats on the Board, meant a great acceleration of business, for they could act with Board authority and were able to relieve the C.N.S. of an immense amount of work.t The Anti-Submarine Division, instituted under RearAdmiral A. L. Duff, was generically merely a belated Plans Division directed towards a special objective. Under Rear-Admiral Sir William Reginald Hall the Intelligence Division greatly extended its activities; and its chief did much to introduce closer co-operation with the other divisions of the Staff.

It is important to remember that this system was introduced by Lord Jellicoe during war and was forced on us by the exigencies of war. It was not a question of this or that theory but a question of urgent pressing necessity and of minutes loaded with fate. There was a time in 1917 when one could almost see the sands running out, and could only hope that the moment of final exhaustion would never arrive. It never did. The sands ran out for Germany while we still had some grains in hand; and one of the factors which contributed to this result was the development of the staff system which took place both at the Admiralty and in the commands at sea between 1916 and 1918. Let us endeavour to formulate briefly in a general form the principles of the system adopted in 1917, which was in its main outline that of Moltke and Lord Haldane adapted to naval needs.

*The term 'Naval Staff' was substituted for the term 'War Staff.' † See Lord Jellicoe's 'Crisis of the Naval War,' cap. i.

The principal aspects of the command fall under three categories-Operations, Administration, and Technical,— corresponding to three lines of practical cleavage. The first enshrines the main purpose and policy of a business; the second is responsible for its maintenance and equipment in an efficient state; the third deals with the scientific aspect of various applied sciences associated with it. Operations' is the premier function; and its special task is to appreciate the situation continuously, to assist the Command in the consideration and definition of requirements and with the preparation and conduct of operations, and to convert the intentions, policy, and decisions of the Command into orders and instructions. It has further to keep a record of the positions, strength, and movements of its own forces, to visualise the situation clearly for all other divisions of the Staff on charts of the situation,† and to furnish timely information of all requirements to the administrative services.

The principal divisions of a Naval Staff are Plans, Operations, Intelligence, and the Staff Secretariat. The Trade Division, which deals with the question of maritime trade and acts as a link between the Admiralty and Mercantile Marine, is generically an aspect of Operations. The same may be said of the Mercantile Movements Division (now extinct), which dealt with the important task of controlling all movements of convoys and sea-borne trade. The Anti-Submarine Division (now also extinct) belonged generically to the Plans aspect of Operations.' The function of the Intelligence Division is implied in its name. Its business is to collect, sift, and distribute information as to the position, movements, and strength of the enemy, and to assist 'Operations' and 'Plans' to appreciate the situation. All information in the Operations Division ought to be

The Secretariat and Financial aspects are omitted as being essentials of every organisation. In a big business or industry, operations become financial, for the main purpose is usually to supply some commodity with a certain degree of profit.

Until the Anti-Submarine Division was created, there was no operations chart in which a staff officer could see, clearly visualised, the positions of enemy submarines so far as they were known. Such charts had been started at the beginning of the war, but 'pink' (i.e. secret) telegrams were not allowed to be inserted on them-a defect which rendered the charts worse than useless, for practically all information of importance was 'pink.'