'interference' began with the action of the Cabinet on October 4 in reopening the question of the advance to Baghdad. Mr. Asquith took much the same line in the House of Commons. He sheltered himself behind General Nixon, of whom he said, with scant justice to others, that in the autumn of 1915 he was ' easily the most successful general in all the theatres of war.' Mr. Chamberlain wanted to know what the House of Commons would have said if the Cabinet' had set up our own opinions ' in opposition to those of the general officer on the spot.' All these contentions are unconstitutional and unsound, and their validity cannot be admitted for a single moment. They recall to memory Mr. Balfour's speech in the House of Commons on January 31, 1900, after General Buller's repulse at Spion Kop, when he virtuously declared that the British generals in the field had not been hampered by any orders or instructions whatever from the Cabinet. No Government can abdicate and yet remain in office, least of all in time of war. It was remarked in 1900, with reference to Mr. Balfour's speech, that 'no member of the Cabinet appears to have quite grasped the ' elementary truth that the conduct of a war is the business ' of a government, which cannot clear its responsibility by ' delegating its powers to an inferior authority.' As a matter of fact, successive British Governments have constantly interfered with military plans during the present war, and it is imperative that they should do so on occasion. None know this better than the various Ministers who, when their Mesopotamia schemes came to grief, pleaded that they had followed expert advice. The frequent cry in the popular press, Trust 'the soldiers and seamen,' is the negation of all government if literally adopted as our watchword in war. The function of the Government is to examine the proposals of the soldiers and seamen, to accept or reject them, to come to decisions in the light of common sense, and to shoulder the responsibility. Had the Cabinet continued to maintain the attitude of polite and unquestioning detachment which was the rule in the autumn of 1914, we should by now have been defeated. But responsibility carries penalties in the event of failure, and although Mr. Austen Chamberlain made the plea which has been quoted, he recognised the wholesome principle involved by tendering his resignation after the Commission had reported.

In spite of the fact that he was Secretary of State for India, his share of responsibility was in effect precisely the same as that of his colleagues, neither more nor less. He declined to admit that the policy adopted by the Cabinet was wrong, but he accepted the result and relinquished office. Lord Curzon afterwards said that his conduct was almost quixotic.' It was nothing of the sort. It was the acceptance of a sound constitutional principle, and though Mr. Chamberlain was alone in taking this courageous course, his decision raised him in the esteem of his countrymen, and will strengthen rather than prejudice his future opportunities of public service. It remains a matter for deep regret that at so critical a moment as the present India should have been deprived of the services of so capable a Secretary of State.

The Commission found quite correctly that the advance to Baghdad was an offensive movement based upon political ' and military miscalculations and attempted with tired and insufficient forces, and inadequate preparation.' It placed the weightiest share of responsibility' upon General Nixon, whose confident optimism was the main cause of the decision 'to advance.' It considered that the other persons responsible, in the order and sequence of responsibility,' were Lord Hardinge, General Duff, General Barrow, Mr. Chamberlain, and the War Committee of the Cabinet. The suggested sequence of responsibility is difficult to accept, even in the case of General Nixon. The Commission rightly observed that the political heads of departments have the option and power of accepting or rejecting the advice of their expert subordinates. The acceptance by a chief of wrong advice 'from expert subordinates may be an extenuation of, but 'cannot secure complete immunity from, the responsibility * for the evils which may ensue.' The principles here defined might have been more strongly stated. Our analysis of the origin of the advance to Baghdad has been in vain if it has not shown that the first impulse came from the Cabinet, and that except in the special case of General Nixon, the judgment of the Government of India and of the military experts was swayed to an excessive degree by a desire to meet the supposed wishes of the Cabinet. It has been admitted that the Cabinet were grievously misled by military opinion, but the plea is an

extenuation and not an acquittal. Their statement that they were anxious about Persia is true, but it is not the whole truth, as is proved by Mr. Chamberlain's telegram of October 21. Our conclusion is that they were eager for a success in some portion of the theatre of war, and that when a chance seemed to offer they clutched at it and pressed for it without sufficient scrutiny. The military advice they received entitles them to be relieved from unqualified condemnation, but the primary blame lies at their door. They made a grievous mistake, which cost many thousands of lives, and their worst fault was their subsequent collective impenitence. One other conclusion emerges from this examination. There is no sign that a single clear brain investigated the problem of Baghdad. The contradictions and the waverings, the masses of irrelevant detail, the endless meetings and consultations and telegrams, the confusion of the whole business, form a mortifying revelation of our methods of conducting war in 1915. Had one clearminded man in authority stripped the whole subject of its wrappings, and taken his stand firmly upon the simple point that a solitary tired and reduced division without adequate backing should not have been sent to capture a great city in an inhospitable region at a distance by river of 570 miles from the sea, there might have been no disaster.

We have confined our analysis to the question of responsibility for the advance to Baghdad, because every other point raised in the controversy is subsidiary to that paramount issue. Both in the debates in Parliament, and in the discussions in the press, attention was directed to a whole series of matters of secondary importance, some of which were almost irrelevant. One example must suffice. A great deal was said about a warning sent on October 21 at the instance of the General Staff, stating that 60,000 Turks might be concentrated at Baghdad at the end of January. General Nixon did not receive the warning, but the point is not very material, because nearly two months before the date mentioned General Townshend was beleaguered in Kut. Another warning, explicitly stating that Marshal von der Goltz and 30,000 Turks were on their way to Baghdad, was received by General Nixon on November 17, four days before the battle of Ctesiphon, but he merely replied that 'at present I do not accept these reports as conclusive

⚫ for various reasons.' Nothing short of a positive order would have made him hesitate.

Public indignation was almost exclusively concentrated upon the terrible revelations associated with the breakdown of the medical organisation, and also upon the painful disclosures of the inefficient control of equipment and supply, and above all of river transport, by the Army Department of the Government of India. The case of Major Carter, an officer of the Indian Medical Service who had incurred much unmerited obloquy by his persistent efforts to call attention to the plight of the wounded, was pressed with an excited eagerness which suggested a lack of perspective. While the bad management of the Indian military authorities was deservedly condemned, their plea that they were starved by the War Office, and that their requests for material were ignored, went entirely unheeded. Yet it is a fact that the War Office was so hostile and ungenerous to the Mesopotamia Expedition in 1915, that even the dispatches of the commanders were refused publication in the London Gazette.' Under the influence of the press and of certain Members of Parliament, the public anger was fanned into a wild demand for punishment.' The outcry at length concentrated upon Lord Hardinge, who had left India for ever more than a year earlier, and had returned to his old post as Permanent Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, where his exceptional experience was invaluable. He had steered India safely through the troubled early period of the war, and had left the country amid general manifestations of regret; but an issue which really concerned principles of supreme importance with regard to the conduct of the war degenerated in the end into an insensate clamour for his expulsion from the Foreign Office. He had thrice offered to resign, and on each occasion his request had been refused. Mr. Balfour, who was himself one of the Ministers responsible for the advance to Baghdad, finally crushed the agitation in a speech which, in motive at any rate, is one of the most creditable incidents in his career. We have shown here that if punishment had to be administered, it was bound to begin with Ministers themselves. As this would have involved the elimination of several leading members of the Government, and the consequent paralysis of administration, the excitement suddenly collapsed.

The true object of the Mesopotamia Commission was to find cut in what respect cur methods of conducting war were at fault; to marshal evidence and to assess its meaning, and not to provide scapegoats. The Commission did its work well, and its report is a model of inficial impartiality. Incidentally it revealed grave shortcomings in the administrative system of India, both civil and military. To these we may again revert, but meanwhile it is necessary to say that the findings of the Commission have no relation whatever to the present scheme for the enlargement of Indian self-government. In its dispassionate disclosure of the methods by which the Government of 1915 went about the business of waging war the Commission rendered a great service to the nation, and to that issue public discussion should return in a calmer spirit.

LOVAT FRASER.

No. 463 will be published in January 1918