'Mesopotamia Commission. Report of the Commission Appointed by Act of Parliament to Enquire into the Operations of War in Mesopotamia, together with a Special Report by Commander J Wedgwood, DSO, MP, and Appendices. London: HMSO, 1917.' [‎105r] (209/248)

7
Military Department was to be transformed into a branch of administration
confined to contracts, ordnance, military stores, works, and the like. The
Commander-in-Chief, on the other hand, was to be placed in charge of a newly
designated Army Department, which would be invested with all the duties and
powers of which the old Military Department had been stripped, save those
comprehended under the name of Military Supply.
3. Changes such as these, it is manifest, could easily be made to raise the
largest questions of military organisation in India, such, for example, as were
handled in the Commission of 1879, and on some other occasions. The scheme
itself was inevitably open to many criticisms, both of principle and detail, and
to these it was abundantly subjected from various quarters. Is not the
combination, it was asked, of the active duties of executive command with the
duties of general military administration, a burden too heavy for any one man,
however capable and energetic, to support ? Can the accidents of personality
be overlooked, and the difference between a Commander-in-Chief with special
aptitude and predilection for training, discipline, manoeuvres, mobilisation, and
all the conduct of actual war ; and a Commander-in-Chief of another type who
excels, and might perhaps have been expressly appointed because excelling, in
the sphere of office administration and preparation ? How is one system to fit
each of these two types ? What, again, is to happen in this important sphere
of office administration and organization, if the Member in Charge of the Army
Department, in his other capacity of Commander-in-Chief, is called away to
duties in the field ? Ought not the Member in Charge of Military Supply to
be a civilian rather than a soldier ? On the other hand, is it indispensable that
purely military proposals by the Commander-in-Chief should always be
formally submitted to criticism from other military experts, provided always
that the Governor-General in Council exercises actual and decisive control
where any political or financial question, great or small, directly or indirectly
arises ? And might not that control be more impaired by a possible concert
between two different military authorities under the old system—and I under
stand that such cases have not been unknown—than by a single military
authority with unshared military responsibility, such as is contemplated
under the new ?
4. These are some of the points that have been brought into view by the
Despatch of 31st May, 1905, and in the proceedings that followed it. Your
Excellency is familiar with them all, and it would be waste of time, under our
present circumstances, for me to ask you to travel over ground so well trodden.
Into the great fundamental questions of military systems His Majesty’s
Government do not consider that the occasion of this Despatch calls upon them
to enter. They have to deal with an actual emergency, and to terminate a
deadlock that, apart from a mischievous rise of temperature in discussion to a
point considerably above normal, cannot become other than detrimental to
effective administration of the Army itself.
When Your Excellency assumed the responsibilities of your great office
last November, and I became Secretary of State a few weeks later, it was no
tabula rasa that we found. A proposed scheme had been agreed upon in
principle, with whatever reluctance and qualification, between the Secretary of
State in Council and the Governor-General in Council, with the concurrence of
the Commander-in-Chief, last July. This compromise among conflicting
opinions as to the best way of meeting an admitted desirableness of some
improvement and readjustment in the position of the Military Department, His
Majesty’s Government do not think it wise to reopen, nor by a stroke of the
pen to dismiss, at the risk of an indefinite prolongation of fruitless and injurious
controversy. On a survey of the practical circumstances of the case, they are
convinced that it would be altogether inexpedient to break off Your Excellency s
labours in working out the plan of last summer, in accordance with the request
addressed by my predecessor to the Governor-General of that day. Accord
ingly, the task that Your Excellency had undertaken proceeded. It is
impossible not to recognise the care, fidelity, and diligence, with which those
labours on a vexed and thorny question have been performed, and His Majesty’s