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upon the equipment of the British army, should outweigh that of the majority of the House of Commons. To such men the decision should be left, and one may hope that under this head some useful reforms are actually in progress. But the dread of criticism upon increased estimates is still strong and prevalent, so that even military men, whose position involves the least civil responsibility, may be dangerously tempted to think more of cheapness than is always consistent with perfection in the workmanship.

Naval Administration.

In passing to the still more important and expensive tools which are required for naval purposes, we are in the sad predicament of finding the naval authorities divided amongst themselves. There must be something desperately wrong in this naval administration to yield results like those that have taken place. Externally it has an old, sleepy, superannuated look. It holds out upon the strength of what was done in its younger and more active days. Whatever was good in the old routine keeps going; but wherever provision has had to be made for new emergencies, the failures have been painfully conspicuous. Of the dispatch of transports, and the state of the victualling department, it is not necessary to speak; but in the whole business of ship-building, the Admiralty has been, to say the least of it, signally unlucky; and there are very strong appearances indeed, in favour of the opinion that the Government would get the work better done by private capitalists than it does in its own dockyards. This, however, is not a point to be decided without more information than the public possesses. But, however it may be decided, it is certain that the Admiralty is now the most important department of the English Government. Internally the people govern themselves, with the help of the newspapers. If in the course of some long night the Home Office, with all its bustle, were to be carried away by the Thames, it would be a considerable

time before the nation at large found any difference from its absence. Even the loss of the Foreign Office would not be without its consolations. And if the opinion of the colonies is to be regarded, consolation is by no means the word to express the feeling with which they would learn the total and irreparable destruction of the department which watches over their welfare. But upon the Admiralty all hangs. Internal peace, security of domestic industry, the regular revolution of that complex machinery of credit whose least disturbance is always wide-spread suffering, the stability of the whole majestic system of English freedom, and the inestimable treasures, intellectual and moral, which have been amassed under its shadeall depend upon the vigilance, energy, and foresight of that department to which the guardianship of the English coast is entrusted.

Admiralty Reform.

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Beyond all question that department does require reform— radical reform. How the reform should be applied is not so clear to the unprofessional mind, but the results to be aimed at are perfectly clear; and two things, at all events, will seem, to ordinary common sense, to be amongst the means necessary attaining those results. In the first place, the whole business of preparing the machinery of war, such as ships, should be so far under distinct superintendence and management, that those who are responsible for the management of fleets shall be unbiassed critics of the worth of the tools which are put into their hands. Without some arrangement of this sort there can be no effectual check upon bad workmanship in the dockyards. It is quite true, that means must exist for ensuring perfect unity and subordination in the whole series of labours which are intended to lead to one result; but it is no less true, that as long as the same men, who direct and are responsible for all active naval operations, have also to defend every blunder that may be made in naval architecture, such blunders will

continually occur, and continually impair the efficiency of the service.

Naval Estimates in the House of Commons.

The second point is more important still, and has reference to the manner in which the whole business of the Navy is treated by the House of Commons. In the discussions upon the Navy Estimates, the first point with the most vigilant critics is always the amount. The question of efficiency is second in order, and is habitually so dealt with as to make a Minister feel that if the Government is not strong (and no Government is strong now-a-days), there is no course so safe for him as economy. He may suffer a weak point in the defences to remain weak with impunity; but the enlargement even of a necessary item of outlay is sure to create discussion-always troublesome, often damaging, and will very possibly expose him to a hostile division. He lets the blot stand, trusting that it will not be hit, for the game must be played on somehow. Year after year the same thing goes on. The standard of what is right in such matters is lowered in the minds of those who constitute the executive. The process of dilapidation is permitted to proceed under this economical régime, until some unexpected event-as in the course of the present year-suddenly lifts the veil from the whole mass of crumbling ruins, and shows us at what enormous risk and cost all those slothful and short-sighted savings have been effected.

The critical function of the House of Commons is most valuable, but it should be applied to a different object. Waste and extravagance in themselves are bad, and to be punished; economy is in itself good, and, as a matter of justice, to be enforced; but in this matter economy is not the object of chief importance to any one. That which a Minister representing the Admiralty in the House of Commons ought to have, beyond all other things, to fear, is the detection of in

efficiency in the department over which he presides. No criticism can be too searching, no attempt objectionable, to bring into the light the full details of an administration which creaks with rust in all its wheels, but the thing to be dreaded by every official, from the highest to the lowest, is, incompleteness in the work. An overcharge or excessive estimate ought here, if anywhere, to be venial; but the other delinquency is one grave enough to warrant the House of Commons in taking down and sharpening afresh that old weapon of impeachment which it has hardly used in earnest since the days of Strafford.

Men wanted who can use the Tools.

The previous remarks have had reference chiefly to the tools to be used in warfare. In this department England ought to be pre-eminent. From the manufacture of a matchlock to the construction of a man-of-war, she is able to do whatever human skill can accomplish. With nothing less than this has she any reason to be content. Having the hand of the cunning workman, and all the materials upon which he is to operate, failure can only be due to mismanagement. But far more important than the instruments of warfare is the temper, and training, and numbers of the men who are to wield them. "Walled towns," says Bacon, "stored arsenals and armories, goodly races of horse, chariots of war, elephants, ordinance; all this is but a sheep in a lion's skin, except the breed and disposition of the people be stout and warlike." Happily the breed and disposition of the English people are stout and warlike; but even this is not enough, for the bravest men on earth may be no more than food for gunpowder without discipline.

Discipline is a word of immense import. In this connection. it means a training which enables men to act together. They can do so only by habits of exact obedience to command. Upon this nearly the whole power of civilized man depends.

Whether in war or in peace, it is all the same. Discipline is as necessary in industry as it is in fighting. But habits of any sort cannot be created in a moment. They must always be a work of time. You may have a number of intelligent men, familiar with figures and book-keeping, all ready, and yet find it hard to organize them into a bank. To create a new body like the Bank of England, without taking the materials wholesale from other banks, would be totally impossible. The machinery of that establishment has gone on revolving incessantly for more than a hundred and fifty years. Every new clerk who becomes a part of it is kept in his place and carried along, until he is used to the routine, by those who have been there before him. This is the quickest and surest mode of discipline, and yet this takes time. Imagine the business of the Bank of England handed over for a week to a body of volunteers! In every branch of industry, we find organization and discipline the conditions of success. How elaborate this organization is, may be seen in Mr. Babbage's analysis of it in his "Economy of Machinery and Manufactures." How important it is, and how difficult it is to create it, may appear from what has often happened in the cotton districts. In times of slack demand, when the immense productive power of the factories, still going on, has glutted the warehouses with goods for which there are no purchasers, it would often be a great gain to the capitalist to stop the works, and at the same time to stop the profuse outflow of his capital in wages. Yet that expedient is not resorted to, except in the last extremity, and mainly for this reason—that when once the “hands” of a mill are fairly dispersed, it is exceedingly hard to re-establish the organization. In other words, the millowners think it bad economy to disband one of their regiments, because, though they may fairly expect to have veterans to enlist from, when they want them, they know that, even with veterans, there will be delay, and blundering, and waste before the living mechanism can again get into order.

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