HL Deb 29 March 1889 vol 334 cc1125-39
THE EARL OF CARNARVON

, in rising to inquire whether Her Majesty's Government could give any information as to the time when the Commission appointed last year to consider the administration of the Naval and Military Departments would report; also whether it was part of the duty of the Commission to report whether the great delays in the manufacture and production of guns were due to defects in our administrative system, said: Your Lordships will doubtless remember the general object of this Commission, and the circumstances under which it was appointed last year. The Commission is a very important one. Lord Hartington is the Chairman; the First Lord of the Treasury and Lord Randolph Churchill are among its Members. It was a question debated much at the time of the appointment of the Commission whether some means should not be provided for fixing authoritatively the standard of military and naval strength. I think myself that no one will really be satisfied until this is somehow arrived at. If such a standard could be fixed, a great deal of present controversy would be saved, and we should no longer, as now, be working very often in the dark. But that was not the decision which was then arrived at, and Her Majesty's Government recommended the appointment of a Commission, which was "to consider the administration of the Military and Naval Departments"—in fact, to consider the relations between those Departments, and between them and the Treasury. My Lords, this is not by any means the first Commission on this subject that has been appointed. Some of your Lordships may have read, and if you have you will have read with very great interest and admiration, the Report of the Commission that was appointed about two years ago, of which the learned Judge, Sir Fitzjames Stephen, was Chairman, on the system under which the patterns of warlike stores are made and passed into Her Majesty's Service. That Report, to which I must refer, was not only one which is characterized by great ability, but it contains statements of the most serious nature. To that Commission was referred the question of corruption in certain cases. The Commissioners acquitted those who were charged with corruption, but they certainly pronounced an extremely heavy censure upon the Departments of Administration upon the ground of inefficiency. They went so far indeed as to imply, if not to say in so many words, that it is almost in present circumstances a chaotic system. They dwelt very much on the importance of decentralization, and I think everyone who has turned his attention to the subject will be prepared to admit that in that they were eminently right. But, if I understand rightly, the present position of affairs in the War Office, recent changes have been rather in the opposite direction. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for War, in a speech made a short time since, expressed his intention of decentralizing in certain cases. My right hon. Friend has my hearty good wishes in that object, though I could desire that the decentralizing process were carried a good deal further than is apparently contemplated. I would ask your Lordships to consider for one moment what the position of the Secretary of State for War really is. He has to discharge a number of functions and duties which, physically and mentally, are absolutely beyond the scope of any living man. There are no less than five different capacities which he holds. First of all, he is a Cabinet Minister, which involves the careful consideration of the most important questions; secondly, he has to deal with questions in Parliament of a military character; thirdly, the whole of the Stores and the Ordnance pass under his review, and for them he is responsible; fourthly, the enormous question of fortifications comes under his charge; and lastly, he is responsible for the Estimates in their preparation and passage through Parliament. He is, moreover, in nine cases out of ten, a civilian, who has to learn his business when he goes to the War Office; he is constantly changing, and, therefore, cannot possibly secure anything like a continuity of military policy. Between 1881 and 1887 there have been no less than six Secretaries of State, or an average of one a year. What is the result of all this? It is the entire absence of responsibility on the part of individuals, running from top to bottom of our system. There are cutlasses which will not cut, swords that break, bayonets that bend, cartridges that jam, saddlery that is defective, and stores which are absolutely vicious and bad; and there are guns designed and ordered sometimes years and years before they ever come to their completion, or when they do, they are practically worthless. What the country complains of is that the responsibility cannot be fixed on any one person, or even on one part of the system, the consequence being that no individual is ever punished. I read with great interest the other day the statement of the Secretary of State for War. As to the coaling stations, my right hon. Friend frankly admitted that what I and others have been complaining of for so long was correct, and that at this moment, after eight or nine years of waiting, virtually none of those stations are in an adequately defensible condition. My right hon. Friend also promised the larger guns, and in this I hope the Secretary for War was not too optimistic in his calculations. Those large guns are almost the first and most pressing need. They have been promised for a very long time, but at this moment none of the large 9.2 in. type are mounted, at home or abroad. I do not blame any individual; but on the whole I think this position of affairs is scandalous. For years and years those guns have been promised, and year after year large sums of money have been spent, and yet at the end of all this time we are still without that which is considered to be essential. The only way of escape from the difficulty is to hand over the contracts to private firms. We are in terrible arrear. This country cannot be placed in these matters beside France, Germany, Italy, the United States, or even with some of our own Colonies, where the best of guns exist, which have been obtained from private manufacturres. I believe from what I have heard that at this moment the United States has a certain number of the 9.2 inch guns which we have never been able to procure. How far, then, is our administrative system and organization responsible for those great defects? A good many years ago, but not out of the recollection of many of your Lordships, the Ordnance Department was separated from the duties of the Secretary for War and of the Secretary for the Colonies as he then was, the two offices being conjoined in one Minister, who embraced the double functions of War Minister and Colonial Minister. The Master General was at the head of the Department. He was an officer of the highest rank and status; he was, so to speak, a permanent officer, and in many instances he sat in the Cabinet of the day, as in the case, among others, of Lord Hardinge and the Duke of Wellington. I have heard from many persons in former years of the great advantage derived to the Cabinet from the presence of the Duke of Wellington on all military questions. I think that was a wise plan, so far as it went; but at the time of the Crimean War, when our military arrangements were re-organ- ized in great haste, and in circumstances of much confusion, the Ordnance Department was made a separate department. About 1869 the Surveyor-General's Department was created, the object being to have at the head of the Department to which was transferred the business of the Ordnance, not only an officer, but also, if possible, a Member of the House of Commons. But very soon the professional element dropped out, and a civilian was appointed. Since then, I believe that the great majority of Surveyors General have been civilians. And not only are they engaged in political life and continually changing, but they are under the influence of their so-called subordinates in the War Office. Here, again, is another instance of the want of responsibility on which I lay so much stress. Eight or nine years ago the Ordnance Committee was established. It was a body, partly composed of civilians and partly of officers; but inasmuch as it changes periodically, it is impossible to fix responsibility upon it. The chain of responsibility extends from the Secretary of State, through the Commander-in-Chief, the Director of the Ordnance Committee, the subordinate officers who have to deal with the branches of the business, down to the manufacturer. It is absolutely impossible when a gun bursts to fix the responsibility on one of the different persons or departments which I have enumerated. This means a very serious state of affairs, and yet it exists in nearly every branch of the Service. I will trouble your Lordships with but a single quotation, and that is very apt. In the Egyptian Campaign it was stated in the evidence before the Commission that— Out of 110 shrapnell shell, 55 were found defective, some having no bursting charges, and others having the bursting charges wet. Out of a total of 398 shrapnell shells, 156 were found correct—that is, about 39 per cent; 125, portion of bursting charge gone—about 31 per cent; 61 empty—about 16 per cent; 30 damp—about 8 per cent; and 26 jammed—about 7 per cent. The statement of Lord Wolseley upon that is as follows:—"

April 13, 1885.

"My Lord,—It is difficult for me to adequately describe the feelings with which I have read the inclosed papers describing the condition of the ammunition supplied from Woolwich to the only battery of Royal Artillery which accompanied the column recently operating from Korti across the Bayuda Desert. In all our small wars the British soldier has to contend against enemies vastly superior in number, and it is only by superior discipline and the efficiency of our arms of precision that we can secure victory. I have already addressed your Lordship on the subject of the carelessness shown by those responsible at home for the quality of the ammunition supplied to the troops in the field, in issuing star shells of a different calibre from that of the guns of the battery serving here. I trust the new proof contained in the inclosed papers of the culpable negligence of some branch of department at home will lead to an inquiry into its working by a board of selected officers of the line, unconnected in every way with the Woolwich manufacturing or store department, or with the administration under which they work. I write strongly because I feel strongly when I think of how the lives of gallant soldiers may have been sacrificed in the present campaign, and may be again so sacrificed in the future, through the inexcusable carelessness of individuals in the Woolwich Arsenal, and through the unsoundness of a system under which such ammunition as that described in these inclosures could possibly have been issued for service in the field.

"I have, &c.,

"WOLSELEY, General."

It is needless to comment upon that. Indeed, I should only weaken such a letter by doing so. Sir Fitzjames Stephen's Report summed up the opinion of the Commissioners as to the present defects in this particular weapon. They said that our system had no definite object, and no efficient head, and, lastly, no definite practical method of dealing with all those technical and scientific stores and implements which had to be dealt with. It is impossible to conceive a stronger or a more sweeping statement than that, and yet, as a matter of fact, I have never heard it contradicted or controverted in any way. If the state of things be as described, of course we are convicted of very great waste and inefficiency. Efficiency and economy generally go hand in hand, but our system is against both. No doubt, under our Parliamentary system we cannot have the vigour, the rapidity of action, and the mobility of foreign Governments. But, on the other hand, there are also great difficulties arising out of our management of that system, and the organization which we have created. For this we are responsible, and on these questions I hope the Commission of which I am inquiring will be able to make full and adequate recommendations. The Commissioners are so constituted that they ought to do so, but, on the other hand, we must always look in the main and in the end to Her Majesty's Government. They have, of course, the spending of this large sum of £18,000,000 a year. They have the real power and the real responsibility. I do not doubt their desire to do what is right, and I have not made these observations with the desire of casting blame on any individual. It is because I am impressed with the serious position of circumstances that I desire to call attention to some at least of the most important factors in this case, and to point out how great, in my opinion, is the evil, how great is the waste, how great is the danger, and how great is the need of someone finding a remedy with the least possible delay.

*THE EARL OF MORLEY

Before the noble Lord answers the question, I would ask the House to give me their patience for a few moments. My noble Friend has traversed the whole field of military administration, and though I agree with a great deal that has fallen from the noble Lord, I think that many of the faults in the system are not referable specially to War Office administration, but are really inherent in our Parliamentary government and administration. The noble Lord referred at length to the Report of the Commission over which Sir James Stephen presided. Able as the Report was in many particulars, I venture to differ entirely from the conclusions at which it arrived for the reform of our system of military administration. The re-introduction of the Ordnance Committee would, in my opinion, increase the confusion. I think it is essential to have a Secretary of State who should be responsible to Parliament for the Army Estimates and for all that depends upon them. I do not for a moment say that the War Office itself, or the manufacturing departments are perfect in organization, but many of the errors and misfortunes, referred to by the noble Lord cannot entirely be put down to faults of the system in the War Office itself. I think the noble Lord was rather misled as to the character of the Ordnance Committee and his statements were calculated to mislead the House as to its func- tions. I always understood that that Committee, composed of the ablest Ordnance officers who could be found, and of eminent mechanical engineers, was a purely consultative committee which only made such experiments as it was requested to make by the Secretary of State or his Ordnance advisers. So far it is, no doubt, responsible for the Reports which it sends in to the Secretary of State. The noble Lord also spoke of the Surveyor General of the Ordnance. Certainly, I have some sympathy with the noble Lord when I consider what the office originally was, and what it eventually came to be. When it was instituted by Lord Northbrook in 1869 it was intended to be a technical and professional office to be held by a distinguished Ordnance officer. In my judgment, it is a great pity that that principle was departed from, and that it came to be a Parliamentary office. I believe that if we had had an officer of technical experience as adviser to the Secretary of State a great deal of evil would have been avoided, and much good would have been done. As to the latter part of the question, relating to the manufacture and production of guns, the noble Lord has hardly referred to it at all. I am not going to say for a moment that the delays have not been greater than they ought to have been; but here again the House and the country should draw a distinction between delays which are the result of bad administration and those which are the result of the conditions of manufacture. For the last few years we have been passing through an absolutely experimental stage in the manufacture of big guns, as regards their construction, as regards the material from which they are made, and as regards the powder which is to be used in them. As soon as one pattern is supposed to be perfect in all particulars, the inventive genius of some individual would suggest some improvement. There is no stability or permanence in the patterns, and to that is owing a great deal of the delay of which the noble Lord so justly complains. I agree with the noble Lord's remarks about obtaining guns by contract; but the noble Lord should remember the great difficulty that existed some years ago in finding private firms that could manufacture guns of great calibre. There was not more than one—if there was one—firm in the country which could produce satisfactorily the huge ingots of steel which were necessary for the construction of the big guns then made. This has been to a great extent corrected now, and no doubt the noble Lord opposite (Lord Harris) will tell the House what has been done in this direction. I hope the system of putting guns out to contract will be largely increased. Before I sit down I should like to know, though it is perhaps hardly fair to ask the noble Lord without notice, how far the recommendations of the Committee, over which I had the honour to preside, have been carried into effect? I refer to the Committee which inquired into the Manufacturing Departments of the Army, which sat at the same time as Sir Fitzjames Stephen's Commission. One great object of that Committee was to centre responsibility somewhere. One suggestion was that there should be one head of the Manufacturing Departments of the Army; another and most important suggestion was, that there should be an absolute divorce of inspection from manufacture. We attached great importance to the latter suggestion, and I should like to learn whether any steps have been taken to carry out the recommendation.

THE UNDER SECRETARY OF STATE FOR WAR (Lord HARRIS)

My Lords, the questions put to me by the noble Earl may be answered shortly. The noble Marquess who presided over the Commission referred to by the noble Earl hopes to be able to report about Easter. The second point referred to in the question was not, in the opinion of the noble Marquess, referred to the Commission, though they might probably deal with it incidentally. I quite feel that an answer as brief as that would not be respectful to your Lordships, and would not satisfy the noble Earl, but I was not quite prepared for the noble Earl's going back to the Report of the Commission two years ago, the report and recommendations of which had been fully dealt with. Before, however, dealing with that part of the noble Earl's speech, I would like to refer briefly to the death of Mr. Guy Dawnay, who, by the great experience gained in his hunting expeditions in South Africa, proved a most valuable officer in our South African campaigns. He was selected by the noble Marquess as Surveyor General of the Ordnance in 1885, and I am sure that all who came into contact with him will agree that it would be impossible to find a man more assiduous in his public duties, or more amiable as a friend. For two years or more Mr. Dawnay had been working with great success upon the completion of the new rifle, and if that rifle should fulfil the expectations formed of it, the result will be largely due to Mr. Dawnay. The noble Earl based his speech in great measure on the Report of the Commission now two years old. That Commission was appointed to consider the system of passing stores into the Service. It went somewhat further, and expressed an opinion that it would be desirable tore-establish such an official as the Master General of Ordnance. The noble Earl opposite has pointed out that it was the intention of Lord Northbrook that the office of Surveyor General of Ordnance should be held by a distinguished military man, but that Parliament was too strong for the noble Lord, and insisted upon having a political official. I quite agree that many of the difficulties in the administration of a great spending department like the War Office arise from our political system. The noble Earl expressed himself strongly in favour of decentralization, and did the fullest justice to Mr. Stanhope's efforts in that direction. I cannot, however, agree with all the noble Earl's illustrations of how such a system could be carried out. At the same time I hope that the system of decentralization initiated by Mr. Stanhope will be carried further, especially with regard to the supply of stores. What is wanted of the War Office, after all, is to make war well, and it would be an immense advantage if there were at particular places stations at which every variety of stores were collected, rather than having them all centralized at Woolwich. The noble Earl referred to the complaint made in the Report of Sir Fitzjames Stephen's Commission with respect to the star shells. My noble Friend opposite has dealt with that question, and shown that it arose from the mistake of an Ordnance Store officer at Alexandria or Cairo, and had nothing to do with the Ordnance Department at Woolwich. Then, again, there was the story of the shrapnell shells and the powder shrinking down below the cap. That was a grave mistake, undoubtedly, and one I do not wish to defend; but it must be remembered that those stores, before they got out to Egypt, passed through several transhipments, and underwent a great amount of jolting, which would account for the slipping of the powder below the cap. It was satisfactorily proved, on examination, that the shells had not been sent out from England without the bursting charge. Moreover, it is part of the drill of an Artillery officer, before he discharges his weapon, to see that the bursting charge is all right. Then the noble Lord has referred to the question of heavy guns. That is a most difficult technical question for a layman to take up; but there are one or two points which ought to be made known, because the public are under some little mistake as to the actual facts. This country adopted breech-loading ordnance long after France and Germany. The noble Earl believed he was justified in saying that we were far behind France in this matter. My belief is exactly the contrary. Though we were two or three years behind France in the adoption of the new type of breech-loading guns, I believe we are now, as regards the new type of steel breech-loading guns, considerably ahead of that country. The noble Earl has quoted occasionally from the Report of Sir Fitzjames Stephen's Commission. I, too, would like to quote a passage from the Report of the same Commission, because it bears directly on the question of heavy ordnance. In paragraph 446 the Report says— We would direct particular attention in connection with this subject—[that is, the subject of the Collingwood gun]—to the evidence given by Sir Frederick Bram well. He considers that there was some local defect in the material of which the gun was composed, and observes that the steel is of such a nature that fracture in it occasionally takes place which can be referred to no visible cause. This, if correct, is a great misfortune. It shows that large guns must, at present, be regarded as being to a greater or less extent experimental and speculative; but it is a misfortune from which all nations must suffer in common. We have reason to think that failures of a very serious character have occurred in both French and German guns, of which very little is allowed to be known. The noble Lord will quite understand that I am not attempting for a moment to defend the delays that take place in completing the supply of guns; it is most deplorable that such a state of things should exist in a great manufacturing country like this; but the public should recognize that we took up the breechloading system later than either France or Germany; that in ten years we have entirely changed from the simple form of muzzle-loader to the complex form of breechloader, from the old iron gun, first of all, to a steel tube with iron hoops, and, finally, to a steel tube with steel hoops, an immense change, especially with a treacherous material such as steel; and that, notwithstanding accidents which have occurred to guns of the new type, there have been none which have resulted in loss of life. Extraordinary advances have also been made in the descriptions of powder to be used. The gun is designed to take a certain charge, and experiments have to be conducted as to the exact charge and the kind of powder which is best adapted for the gun. It is the fact that during the last 10 years we have been in an experimental state. The Secretary of State in another place spoke the other night with hope as to the turn out of guns, but he was not prepared to pledge himself on the subject. After our experience in the past few years, no one would be justified in saying that he was absolutely certain that guns would be always waiting for ships instead of ships having to wait for guns. But quite recently there has been an important Report which leads one to hope that a point has been reached in the manufacturing of guns which will enable them to be produced more rapidly in future. As regards lining, that matter originated practically in 1886. An 8 in. gun fired 366 rounds, and the bore was then found to be so eroded by the action of the powder that the projectile no longer rotated. The gun was sent to Elswick and lined, and the experiment proved quite satisfactory; it proved that guns could be practically renewed and made efficient at a very small cost. That was the origin of the system of lining. It has been tried not only with the 8 in., but also with the 6 in. gun, and is equally successful. There seems to be some impression in the country that there are no new types of breechloading guns in the Services, but that is quite a mistake. In 1882 we had some 350 new type breechloading guns, almost entirely in the sea service; in 1886 we had about doubled the number, and we have now of all types either in the sea-going squadrons or in harbours, or in store, about 1,450 new type breechloading guns, and about 600 of these are 6 in. and upwards. With regard to the question of fixing responsibility upon an individual, I think the noble Earl will himself admit that there is some little difficulty in doing so where the design may be made by one person and the material by another. I should be inclined to think that, to some extent, there is responsibility for a design upon the Ordnance Committee, but it does not follow that, because a gun fails, the design is necessarily responsible, because it must be proved that there was absolutely no flaw whatever in the material before it can be proved that the design was at fault. Therefore I think the difficulties of fixing responsibility are not so light as the noble Earl seemed to think. With reference to the Report of the Committee presided over by the noble Earl opposite (Lord Morley), I may say that the actual recommendations of that Committee as regards the Ordnance factories have been carried out, and the factories—Woolwich, Park-head, Enfield, Waltham—have all been placed under one head. The head of the Ordnance factory, indeed, is very much in the position of a private manufacturer, and is made actually responsible for the stores he issues. The department of the Director of Artillery now examines all stores issued to the Army, and if it chooses to reject them the person who supplies them is brought to book. In order to carry out this system it has been necessary to increase the strength of the Inspecting Department, but I believe the additional expenditure thus involved has been well laid out. Finally, as regards the storage of stores, the Secretary of State, as he has recently explained, has taken steps to put up store buildings in various parts of the country, in order that the stores requisite for particular bodies of troops may be decentralized and easily got at, and that we may not have the difficulty of dealing with an enormous mass of stores centralized in the central depôt at Woolwich. Although the Report of Sir Fitzjames Stephen's Commission, and that of my noble Friend (the Earl of Morley) were but two years old, a very great deal has been done to improve the system of administration in the Army. It would, in my opinion, be most unwise to interfere with the gradual progress of the improvements that are being effected, because the War Office has no doubt that they are beneficial, and that the system adopted must result in the supply to the Army of good material, and of an arm which will worthily stand the test in the hour of trial.

*THE EARL OF CARNARVON

The noble Lord has made a very good defence of that which it is his duty to defend; and if I do not quite agree with him in all his remarks, it is not for want of appreciation of the ability he has shown. I desire merely to point out that whilst the explanation he gave as to the star shells may be correct, the other charge which I quoted from the Report is not dealt with at all. The defects in the shrapnel shells were not due to any manipulation at Cairo and Alexandria, but to mistakes made before the stores left Woolwich. My noble Friend quoted against me a paragraph from this Report, from she evidence of Sir Frederick Bram well, so the effect that In the present condition of steel, fractures continually take place, and can be referred to no visible cause. My hon. Friend should have read also he next paragraph, in which the Commissioners sum up their opinion, as apart from that of Sir Frederick Bram well, in he sentence— Such results from the manufacture of guns can hardly be considered satisfactory.

THE DUKE OF CAMBRIDGE

The noble Lord has referred to the recent changes in the system of administration of the Army, which, we trust, will lead to no inconsiderable results. I am not sure, however, that down to the present he results of the examination of arms lave been as satisfactory as we could wish. In reference to the Egyptian Campaign, the country must remember that in time of war, when a good deal of rough work is going on, it is quite natural that accidents should happen. It is, therefore, not quite reasonable to say, because a weapon is broken, that therefore it was due to bad manufacture. It is utterly unreasonable, because of these unavoidable accidents, to blame the Department, although, at the same time, it is only right that faults of this kind should be carefully looked into, and I believe that the steps now being taken will add very much to the security which will be felt in the equipment of our forces. I feel with the noble Earl the great disadvantage of having so many guns unfinished, but the fact is that the extraordinary march of intelligence under which we are now living produces every day some new invention, some new experiment, both in regard to the steel of which the weapon is made and with regard to the powder that is used. Noble Lords have no idea of the delicacy of these heavy guns. The enormous charge alone makes it essential that the greatest care should be taken, because the strongest feeling would arise if any accident occurred whereby life was lost. That circumstance naturally makes the manufacturers doubly careful about the arms which are to be placed in position and in the hands of the troops. We must look for delay, therefore, in preparing those heavy weapons. I feel very much, however, that we want them, and the sooner we get them the better I think it will be. The Secretary of State for War and I are anxious that they should be prepared as rapidly as possible, and the Secretary of State has done everything to hasten their manufacture. The difficulties, however, are found to be very great. But I do not believe that the delay is the fault of the Departments, or of the system under which we at present administer those Departments.

LORD HARRIS

I think the noble Earl will be glad to learn that there are guns of larger size than those he referred to actually already in position. I admit that there is delay in regard to the 9-in. guns, but there are, as a matter of fact, 29 12-in. guns mounted, and a considerable number of those are in the land service.