'PAPERS RELATING TO THE MESOPOTAMIAN COMMISSION from SIR E. BARROW'S ROOM' [‎620r] (1251/1386)

13.
was powerfully represented by tbe Commandsr-in-Chief both through
the medium of official correspondence and by his own presence and
influence in the Council Chamber.
It is an filamentary principle that the functions of
administration^ and of executive command should, as far as possible,
be kept distinct, and therefore the great spending departments of
the Army in India were rightly placed under* a separate adminis
trative authority. One result of this system was that whereas a
salutary check was placed on hasty or ill-adviseu military ^xpendi
ture,continuity of policy was more or less ensured, whoever the
Commander-in-Chief might be. Another result was that unde** this
system the soldier element in the Government exercised a doufcly
powerful voice in all military matters on which the ommander-m-
Chief and Military Member were in accord, for obviously when they
were agreed, a civilian xismsnt cabinet could hardly oppose loeir
views. On the other hand if they were not "^n agreement, t e
Government had the great advantage of hearing both sides oi an
argument as laid before them by responsible professional expetts.
'The svstem I have described is practically t' at whic„
prevailed in India during the half century eino^the Hutiny. It
had doubtless many defects, but they were capable of improvement
and on t v e whole the system may be said to have been reasonaoiy
well adapted to the peculiar circumstancesi of India. The system
however is defunct and cannot well be resuscitated ev^-n if ohat
were desirable.
In my minute of the 24th July I showed the weakness of
the present system and the results of over centralisation and I
endeavoured to indicate how the worst evils of the present
system might be temporarily rectified, but t e remedies I suggests
do not fully meet the requirements of the future organisation of
the Indian Army and it now remains for me to suggest wnat organi
sation might take the place both of the system which expired in
1906 and the highly centralise- system which replaced it and which
recent events have proved to be unequal to the strain of a gi-^at
campaign.
Tt is essential that we should approximate as far as
possible towards the home system of administration^ithout copying
.a