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 Chapter 2 Visual Basic, Controls, and Events

Section 2.1 An Introduction to Visual Basic 2015

1. Programming in VB 2015 is different from traditional programming environments because

first you should
(A) write the code.
(B) input the data.
(C) name the buttons.
(D) draw the user interface.
D

2. GUI stands for

(A) graphical user interface.
(B) graphing user introduction.
(C) graphical unit interface.
(D) graphical user input.
A

3. A mouse click is an example of an event. (T/F)

T

Section 2.2 Visual Basic Controls

1. Press F4 to
(A) run a program.
(B) display the Properties window.
(C) display the Solution Explorer window.
(D) terminate a program.
B

2. Which of the properties in a control's list of properties is used to give the control a
meaningful name?
(A) Text
(B) ContextMenu
(C) ControlName
(D) Name
D

© 2017 Pearson Education, Inc., Hoboken, NJ. All rights reserved.

3. Visual Basic access keys are created by using which symbol in a button's Text property?
(A) @
(B) &
(C) %
(D) #
B

4. Which of the following steps specifies P as the access key for a button?
(A) Set the Text property to Com_pute.
(B) Set the Text property to Com&pute.
(C) Set the Text property to &Com_pute.
(D) Set the Text property to comPute.
B

5. When a Visual Basic program is running, the user can move from one control to another
using the keyboard by pressing the
(A) Tab key.
(B) Space bar.
(C) Enter key.
(D) Backspace key.
A

6. Which of the following properties determines the words appearing in a form's title bar?
(A) Text
(B) Caption
(C) Name
(D) Title
A

7. What effect will the following statement have?

lblOne.Visible = False
(A) Enable lblOne
(B) Delete lblOne
(C) Make lblOne invisible
(D) It is not a valid Visual Basic statement.
C

8. When creating a new program in Visual Basic, you are asked to supply a name for the
program. If you do not specify a name, a default name is used. What is this default name?
(A) Wapplication followed by a number.
(B) Application followed by a number.
(C) WindowsApplication.
(D) WindowsApplication followed by a number.
D

© 2017 Pearson Education, Inc., Hoboken, NJ. All rights reserved.

9. In Visual Basic, tooltips assist by showing a small caption about the purpose of each icon
on the Toolbar. How do you make a tooltip appear?
(A) Right click the Toolbar icon and select purpose from the available options.
(B) Position the mouse pointer over the icon for a few seconds.
(C) Hold down a shift key, then click the appropriate Toolbar icon to display its purpose.
(D) Hold down the Alt key, then click the appropriate Toolbar icon to display its purpose.
B

10. The Properties window plays an important role in the development of Visual Basic
programs. It is mainly used
(A) to change how objects look and feel.
(B) when opening programs stored on a disk.
(C) to allow the developer to graphically design program components.
(D) to set program related options like Program Name, Program Location, etc.
A

11. Sizing Handles make it very easy to resize virtually any control when developing programs
with Visual Basic. When working in the Form Designer, how are these sizing handles
displayed?
(A) A rectangle with 4 arrows, one in each corner, around your control.
(B) A 3-D outline around your control.
(C) A rectangle with small squares around your control.
(D) None of the above
C

12. The Font dialog box allows you to select different Fonts, their style, their size, and some
other special effects. How do you bring up this Font dialog box?
(A) In the Properties window, click the ellipsis (…) on the right side of the settings box for
the Font property.
(B) Double-click the control, and select Font Property.
(C) Right-click the control, and select Font Property.
(D) None of the above
A

13. What keyboard shortcut is used to run the current program?

(A) F4
(B) F5
(C) F6
(D) F7
B

© 2017 Pearson Education, Inc., Hoboken, NJ. All rights reserved.

14. What would be a good name for a text box to hold a person’s first name?
(A) txtFirstName
(B) FirstName
(C) txt First Name
(D) First Name
A

15. What feature in Visual Basic allows you to make more room on your screen by temporarily
concealing certain windows?
(A) Help
(B) Auto Hide
(C) Auto Minimize
(D) Expert-View
B

16. What property is available for most controls that allows you to hide/unhide them either
manually by setting the property or by setting it during run time via code?
(A) Clear
(B) Refresh
(C) Visible
(D) View-Control
C

17. What property of controls tells the order they receive the focus when the tab key is pressed
during run time?
(A) Focus order
(B) Focus number
(C) Tab index
(D) Control order
C

18. What is the default tab index of the first object placed on a form?
(A) 0
(B) 1
(C) First
(D) None of the above
A

19. What property of a control determines whether the control can receive the focus during run
time?
(A) TabOrder
(B) Focus
(C) TabIndex
(D) TabStop
D

© 2017 Pearson Education, Inc., Hoboken, NJ. All rights reserved.

20. What menu is used to align controls on a form?
(A) View
(B) Window
(C) Build
(D) Format
D

21. Which of the following is not a submenu of the Format menu?

(A) Align
(B) Make Same Size
(C) Center in Form
(D) Widen
D

22. What property causes a control to disappear when set to False?

(A) Detectible
(B) Visible
(C) Disabled
(D) Supported
B

23. What property restricts the use of a control when set to False?
(A) Available
(B) Accessible
(C) Enabled
(D) Supported
C

24. Changing a control's Text property also changes how you refer to the control in code. (T/F)
F

25. You can display the Properties window by pressing F4. (T/F)
T

26. The Properties window is used to change how objects look and react. (T/F)
T

27. When working with text boxes, the sizing handles allow you to resize the object by
dragging to make it wider or narrower. (T/F)
T

28. Once a text box control is placed on a form, it cannot be resized or moved. (T/F)
F

29. F5 is the keyboard shortcut used to activate the Properties window. (T/F)
F

© 2017 Pearson Education, Inc., Hoboken, NJ. All rights reserved.

 30. Once a control is placed on a form, you can rename it by editing the Name property in the
Properties window. (T/F)
T

31. The Description pane, located below the Properties windows, shows a brief explanation of
the highlighted property. (T/F)
T

32. The ForeColor property of a text box changes the color of the form containing the text box.
(T/F)
F

33. Shortcut keys like F5 (Run), allow you to perform certain tasks without the use of the
mouse. (T/F)
T

34. The recommended prefix for the name of a button control is btn. (T/F)
T

35. The Auto Hide feature of the Toolbox is active when the pushpin is horizontal. (T/F)
T

36. A group of several controls can be resized or moved simultaneously. (T/F)

T

37. The control with tab index 1 is always the first control to receive the focus when the
program is run. (T/F)
F

38. Snap lines can be used to align the bottoms, middles, and tops of controls. (T/F)
T

39. The key combination Shift + arrow key can be used to resize a control or a group of
controls. (T/F)
T

Section 2.3 Visual Basic Events

1. When the user clicks a button, is raised.

(A) an event
(B) a method
(C) a setting
(D) a property
A

© 2017 Pearson Education, Inc., Hoboken, NJ. All rights reserved.

2. Which of the following is not one of the three steps used to create a Visual Basic program?
(A) create the interface
(B) set the properties of the objects
(C) specify the methods
(D) write the code
C

3. IntelliSense is a technology built into Visual Basic that assists the programmer by
(A) automatically inserting text and words that have similar meaning to those currently
being entered by the programmer.
(B) allowing the programmer to edit object properties from inside the code window.
(C) replacing misspelled words with the correct spelling as soon as the programmer presses
the Enter key.
(D) automatically displaying the methods and properties available to a control.
D

4. What of the following is a correct statement for specifying the words to appear in the title
bar of Form1?
(A) Form1.Text = "My Text"
(B) Form1.TitleBar = "My Text"
(C) Me.Text = "My Text"
(D) Me.Caption = "My Text"
C

5. When will the following event procedure be executed?

Private Sub txtBox_TextChanged(...) Handles txtBox.TextChanged

(A) when text is added to the text box

(B) when text is deleted from the text box
(C) when text is modified inside the text box
(D) All of the above
D

6. Which of the following statements specifies that the color of the text in txtBox be red?
(A) txtBox.Text = Color.Red
(B) txtBox.ForeColor = Color.Red
(C) txtBox.ForeColor = Red
(D) txtBox = Color.Red
B

© 2017 Pearson Education, Inc., Hoboken, NJ. All rights reserved.

7. The statement
btnButton.Focus()
(A) has no effect.
(B) moves the focus to the button btnButton.
(C) has the same effect as clicking on the button btnButton.
(D) is invalid in Visual Basic.
B

8. Which of the following statements sets the words on a button to "Push Me"?
(A) btnButton.Name = "Push Me"
(B) btnButton.Text = Push Me
(C) btnButton.Text = "Push Me"
(D) btnButton = "Push Me"
C

9. Which of the following is a valid statement in Visual Basic?

(A) Form1.Text = "Revenue"
(B) Form1.Caption = "Revenue"
(C) btnButton.Text = Push Me
(D) Me.Text = "Revenue"
D

10. A user action such as clicking a button is called

(A) an accident
(B) an event
(C) a procedure
(D) a property
B

11. Visual Basic responds to events using which of the following?

(A) a code procedure
(B) an event procedure
(C) a form procedure
(D) a property
B

12. Which of the following statements will place "Greetings" in the title bar of a form?
(A) Me.Title = "Greetings"
(B) Me.Text = "Greetings"
(C) Me.Name = "Greetings"
(D) Me.Heading = "Greetings"
B

© 2017 Pearson Education, Inc., Hoboken, NJ. All rights reserved.

13. The following lines of code are valid. (T/F)
Private Sub Click(...) Handles Click
txtBox.Text = ""
End Sub
F

14. Keywords are also referred to as reserved words. (T/F)

T

15. Complete Word is a helpful feature produced by the Microsoft Technology called
IntelliSense. (T/F)
T

16. The Visual Basic Code Editor will automatically detect certain types of errors as you are
entering code. (T/F)
T

17. The statement

txtBox.Font.Bold = True
will produce an error message when Visual Basic tries to execute it. (T/F)
T

18. The Visual Basic Code Editor automatically capitalizes the first letters of reserved words.
(T/F)
T

19. The first line of an event procedure must contain both the keyword Sub and Handles. (T/F)
T

20. The statement btnButton = "Press" produces an error message. (T/F)

T

21. The Properties window cannot be used to display the events associated with a control. (T/F)
F

22. Write a statement that gives the focus to btnCompute.

btnCompute.Focus()

23. Write a statement that disables btnCompute.

btnCompute.Enabled = False

© 2017 Pearson Education, Inc., Hoboken, NJ. All rights reserved.

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Other documents randomly have
different content
The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Brain of an Army:
A Popular Account of the German General Staff
This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States
and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no
restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it
under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this
ebook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the
United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where
you are located before using this eBook.

Title: The Brain of an Army: A Popular Account of the German

General Staff

Author: Spenser Wilkinson

Release date: July 1, 2017 [eBook #55022]

Most recently updated: October 23, 2024

Language: English

Credits: Produced by Al Haines

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE BRAIN OF AN

ARMY: A POPULAR ACCOUNT OF THE GERMAN GENERAL STAFF ***
 THE
BRAIN OF AN ARMY

A POPULAR ACCOUNT
OF THE
GERMAN GENERAL STAFF

BY
SPENSER WILKINSON

NEW EDITION

WITH LETTERS FROM

COUNT MOLTKE AND LORD ROBERTS

WESTMINSTER
ARCHIBALD CONSTABLE
& CO 1895
 BY THE SAME AUTHOR

THE COMMAND OF THE SEA

THE BRAIN OF A NAVY
THE GREAT ALTERNATIVE

and in conjunction with

SIR CHARLES W. DILKE, BART.

IMPERIAL DEFENCE

[Transcriber's note: the errata items below have been applied to this text.]

ERRATA.

page 9, line 6 for have read has

page 10, line 21, for occasion read occasions

PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION

Six years ago a Royal Commission, under the presidency of Lord

Hartington, was known to be inquiring into the administration of the national
defence. There was much talk in the newspapers about the Prussian staff,
and many were the advocates of its imitation in this country. Very few of
those who took part in the discussions seemed to know what the Prussian
staff was, and I thought it might be useful to the Royal Commission and to
the public to have a true account of that institution, written in plain English,
so that any one could understand it. The essay was published on the 11th of
February, 1890, the day on which the Report of Lord Hartington's
Commission was signed.

The essential feature of the Prussian staff system consists in the

classification of duties out of which it has arisen. Every general in the field
requires a number of assistants, collectively forming his staff, to relieve him
of matters of detail, to act as his confidential secretaries, and to represent
him at places where he cannot be himself. The duties of command are so
multifarious that some consistent distribution of functions among the
officers of a large staff is indispensable. In Prussia this distribution is based
on a thoroughly rational and practical principle. The general's work is
subdivided into classes, according as it is concerned with administration and
discipline or with the direction of the operations against the enemy. All that
belongs to administration and discipline is put upon one side of a dividing
line, and upon the other side all that directly affects the preparation for or the
management of the fighting—in technical language, all that falls within the
domain of strategy and tactics. The officers entrusted with the personal
assistance of the general in this latter group of duties are in Prussia called his
"general staff." They are specially trained in the art of conducting operations
against an enemy, that is in the specific function of generalship, which has
thus in the Prussian army received more systematic attention than in any
other. In the British army the assistants of a general are also grouped into
classes for the performance of specific functions in his relief. But the
grouping of duties is accidental, and follows no principle. It has arisen by
chance, and been stereotyped by usage. The officers of a staff belong to the
adjutant-general's branch or to the quartermaster-general's branch, but no
rational criterion exists by which to discover whether a particular function
falls to one branch or to the other. That this is an evil is evident, because it is
manifest that there can be no scientific training for a group of duties which
have no inherent affinity with one another. The evil has long been felt, for
the attempt has been made to remedy it by amalgamating the two branches
in order to sever them again upon a rational plane of cleavage.

But while the essence of the Prussian general staff lies deeply embedded
in the organization of the Prussian army, the interest of the general public
has been attracted by the fact that the great strategist to whom the victories
of 1866 and 1870 are ascribed was not the commander of the Prussian army,
but merely the chief of the general staff of a royal commander-in-chief. It
may well be doubted whether this feature of the Prussian system is suitable
for imitation elsewhere. The Germans themselves evidently regard it as
accidental rather than essential, for in organizing their navy they have, after
much experiment and deliberation, adopted a different plan. They have
appointed their chosen admiral to be, not chief of the staff to an Emperor
who in war, as he takes the field with the army, cannot undertake the
command of the navy, but to be "the commanding admiral."

I refrained in the first edition of this essay from drawing from the German
institution which it describes a moral to be applied to the British army, and
was content with a warning against overhasty imitation. At that time the
nature of the relation between Moltke and the King was still to some extent
veiled in official language, and nothing so far as I am aware had been
published which allowed the facts to rest upon well authenticated, direct
evidence as distinguished from inference. Since then the posthumous
publication of Moltke's private correspondence,[1] and of the first instalment
of his military correspondence,[2] has thrown a flood of light upon the
whole subject. I had the good fortune to be furnished with an earlier clue. As
soon as my essay was ready for the press I ventured to send a proof to Count
Moltke, with a request that he would allow me in a dedication to couple his
name with studies of which his work had been the subject. He was good
enough to reply in a letter of which the following is a translation:—

BERLIN, January 20, 1890.

DEAR SIR,—

I have read your essay on the German general staff with great interest.

I am glad that on p. 63 you dispose of the ever-recurring legend according

to which before every important decision a council of war is assembled. I
can assure you that in 1866 and in 1870-71 a council of war was never
called.

If the commander after consultation with his authorized adviser feels the
need of asking others what he ought to do, the command is in weak hands.
 If King William I. ever really used the expression attributed to him on p.
58, he did himself a great injustice. The king judged the perpetually
changing military situation with an uncommonly clear eye. He was much
more than "a great strategist." It was he who took upon himself an
immeasurable responsibility, and for the conduct of an army character
weighs more than knowledge and science. I think your excellent work would
lose nothing if that passage were omitted.

You touch on p. 112[3] upon the relation between the commander and the
statesman. Neither of the two can set up for himself in advance a goal to be
certainly reached. The plan of campaign modifies itself after the first great
collision with the enemy. Success or failure in a battle occasions operations
originally not intended. On the other hand the final claims of the statesman
will be very different according as he has to reckon with defeats or with a
series of uninterrupted victories. In the course of the campaign the balance
between the military will and the considerations of diplomacy can be held
only by the supreme authority.

It has not escaped your penetration that a general staff cannot be

improvised on the outbreak of war, that it must be prepared long beforehand
in peace, and be in practical activity and in close intercourse with the troops.
But even that is not enough. It must know who is to be its future commander,
must be in communication with him and gain his confidence, without which
its position is untenable.

Great is the advantage if the head of the State is also the leader in war. He
knows his general staff and his troops, and is known by them. In such armies
there are no pronunciamentoes.

The constitution, however, does not in every country admit of placing the
head of the State at the head of the army. If the Government will and can
select in advance the most qualified general for the post, that officer must
also be given during peace the authority to influence the troops and their
leaders and to create an understanding between himself and his general staff.
This chosen general will seldom be the minister of war, who during the
whole war is indispensable at home, where all the threads of administration
come together.
 You have expressed the kind intention of dedicating your interesting
essay to me, but I suggest that you should consider whether without such a
dedication it would not still better preserve the character of perfectly
independent judgment.

With best thanks for your kind communication,

I am, dear sir, yours very truly,
COUNT MOLTKE,
Field Marshal.

It was hardly possible for Moltke, bound as he was by his own high
position, to have expressed more plainly his opinion of the kind of reform
needed in the British army, nor to have better illustrated than by that opinion
the precise nature of his own work.[4]

With Moltke's view that the peculiar position which he held was not
necessarily the model best suited for the circumstances of the British army it
is interesting to compare the judgment expressed quite independently by
Lord Roberts, who kindly allows me to publish the following letter:—

SIMLA,
11th September, 1891.

DEAR MR. WILKINSON,—

I am much obliged to you for so kindly sending me The Brain of an Army

and the other military works which reached me two or three mails ago. Some
of the books I had seen before, and The Brain of an Army I had often heard
of, and meant to study whenever sufficient leisure was vouchsafed to me,
which, alas! is but seldom. I have now read it with great interest.

One point that strikes me is the strong inclination evinced at present to

assume that the German system of apportioning the duties of command and
staff is deserving of universal adoption because under exceptional
circumstances, and with quite an exceptional man to act as head of the Staff,
it proved eminently successful in the wars between Prussia and Austria and
Prussia and France.

The idea of a Chief of the Staff who is to regulate the preparations for and
the operations during a campaign, and who is to possess a predominant
influence in determining the military policy of a nation, is quite opposed to
the views of some of the ablest commanders and strategists, as summarized
at pages 17 and 18 of Home's Précis of Modern Tactics, Edition 1882; and I
doubt whether any really competent general or Commander-in-Chief would
contentedly acquiesce in the dissociation of command and responsibility
which the German procedure necessarily entails. That Von Moltke was the
virtual Commander-in-Chief of the German forces during the wars in
question, and that the nominal commanders had really very little to say to the
movements they were called upon to execute, seems to be clearly proved by
the third volume of the Field Marshal's writings, reviewed in The Times of
the 21st August last. Von Moltke was a soldier of extraordinary ability, he
acted in the Emperor's name, the orders he initiated were implicitly obeyed,
and the military machine worked smoothly. But had the orders not been
uniformly judicious, had a check or reverse been experienced, and had one
or more of the subordinate commanders possessed greater capacity and
resolution than the Chief of the Staff, the result might have been very
different.

In military nations a Chief of the Staff of the German type may perhaps
be essential, more especially when, as in Germany, the Emperor is the head
of the Army and its titular Commander-in-Chief. The reasons for this are
that, in the first place, he may not possess the qualities required in a
Commander-in-Chief who has to lead the Army in war; and in the second
place, even if he does possess those qualities, there are so many other
matters connected with the civil administration of his own country, and with
its political relations towards other countries, that the time of a King or
Emperor may be too fully occupied to admit of his devoting that exclusive
attention to military matters which is so necessary in a Commander-in-Chief,
if he desires to have an efficient Army. A Chief of the Staff then becomes
essential; he is indeed the Commander-in-Chief.

In a small army like ours, however, where the Commander-in-Chief is a

soldier by profession, I am inclined to think that a Chief of the Staff is not
required in the same way as he is in Germany. With us, the man of the stamp
sketched in chapter iv. of The Brain of an Army should be the head of the
Army—the Commander-in-Chief to whom every one in the Army looks up,
and whom every one on service trusts implicitly. The note at page 12 [61] of
your little book expresses my meaning exactly. Blucher required a
Scharnhorst or a Gneisenau "to keep him straight," but would it not have
been better, as suggested in your note, "to have given Scharnhorst and
Gneisenau the actual command"?

I think, too, that an Emperor or King would be more likely than a man of
inferior social standing to take the advice of a Chief of the Staff. The former
would be so immeasurably above all those about him that he could afford to
listen to advice—as the Emperor of Germany undoubtedly did to that of Von
Moltke on the occasion mentioned in the note at page 14 [64]. But the
Commander of about much the same standing socially as his Chief of the
Staff, and possibly not much the latter's senior in the Army, would be apt to
resent what he might consider uncalled-for interference; and this would be
specially the case if he were of a narrow-minded, obstinate disposition.
Indeed, I think that such a feeling would be almost sure to arise, unless the
Commander-in-Chief were one of those easy-going, soft natures which
ought never to be placed in such a high position.

My personal experience is, of course, very slight, but I have been a

Commander with a Chief of the Staff, and I have been (in a very small way)
the Chief of the Staff to a Commander, with whom I was sent "to keep him
straight." It was not a pleasant position, and one which I should not like to
fill a second time. In my own Chief of the Staff (the late Sir Charles
Macgregor) I was particularly fortunate; he was of the greatest possible
assistance to me; but without thinking myself narrow-minded and obstinate,
I should have objected if he had acted as if he were "at the head of the
Army."

I have been referring hitherto more to war than peace, but even in peace
time I doubt if a Chief of the Staff of the German type is suitable to our
organization, and to the comparative smallness of our army. In war time it
might easily lead to disaster. The less capacity possessed by the nominal
Commander-in-Chief the greater might be his obstinacy, and the more
capacity he possessed the more he would resent anything which might
savour of interference. Altogether I think that the office of Chief of the Staff,
as understood in Germany, might easily be made impossible under the
conditions of our service. My opinion is that the Army Head-Quarters Staff
are capable of doing exactly the same work as the Grand General Staff of the
German Army perform, and that there is no need to upset our present system.
We have only to bring the Intelligence and Mobilization Departments more
closely into communication with, and into subordination to, the Adjutant-
General and Quarter-Master-General, as is now being done in India with the
best results.

You will understand that the foregoing remarks are based on the
assumption that in the British Service the office of Commander-in-Chief is
held by the soldier who, from his abilities and experience, has commended
himself to the Government as being best qualified to organize the Army for
war, and if requisite to take command in the field. If, however, for reasons of
State it is thought desirable to approximate our system to the German system
in the selection of the head of the Army, it might become necessary to
appoint a Chief of the Staff of the German type to act as the responsible
military adviser of the Commander-in-Chief and the Cabinet. But in this case
the responsibility of the Officer in question should be fully recognised and
clearly defined.

Believe me,
Yours very truly,
FRED ROBERTS.

To SPENSER WILKINSON, Esq.

The Report of Lord Hartington's Commission, which appeared in the

spring of 1890, seemed to justify the apprehension which had caused me to
write, for it recommended the creation, under the name of a general staff, of
a department bearing little resemblance to the model which it professed to
copy. The Commission, however, was in a most awkward dilemma. It was
confronted in regard to the command of the army with two problems, one of
which was administrative, the other constitutional. The public was anxious
to have an army efficient for its purpose of fighting the enemies of Great
Britain. The statesmen on the Commission were intent upon having an army
obedient to the Government. The tradition that the command of the army
being a royal prerogative could be exercised otherwise than through the
constituted advisers of the Crown was not in practice altogether extinct. It
can hardly be doubted that the Commission was right in wishing to establish
the principle that the army is a branch of the public service, administered and
governed under the authority of the Cabinet in precisely the same way as the
post office. No other theory is possible in the England of our day. But the
attempt to make the theory into the practice touched certain susceptibilities
which it was felt ought to be respected, and the Commission perhaps
attached more importance to this kind of consideration than to the necessity
of preparing the war office for war.

It was no doubt of the first importance to guard against the recurrence of

a state of things in which all attempts to bring the army into harmony with
the needs of the time and of the nation were frustrated by an authority not
entirely amenable to the control of the Secretary of State. Not less important,
however, was the requirement that any change by which this result, in itself
so desirable, might be attained should at the same time contribute to the
supreme end of readiness for conflict with any of the Great Powers whose
rivalry with Great Britain has in recent times become so acute.

In the war of which a part is examined in the following pages a chief of

the staff is seen drafting the orders by which the whole army is guided. He
has no authority; the orders are issued in the name of the commander,—that
is in Prussia, of the king. When, as was the case in 1866 and in 1870-1, the
king shows his entire confidence in the chief of the staff by invariably
accepting his drafts, the direction of the army, the generalship of the
campaign, is really the work of the chief of the staff, though that officer has
never had a command, and has been sheltered throughout under the authority
of another. The generalship or strategy of the campaigns of 1866 and 1870-1
was Moltke's, and Moltke's alone, and no one has borne more explicit
testimony to this fact than the king. At the same time no one has more
emphasized the other fact, that he was covered by the king's responsibility,
than Moltke himself.

The work of generalship can rarely be given to any one but the
commander of an army. When the commander owes his position to other
than military considerations, as is the case in Prussia, where the king is born
to be commander-in-chief as he is born to be king, he is wise to select a good
professional general to do the work. But where a government is free to
choose its commander, that officer will wish to do his own work himself,
and will resent the suggestion that an assistant should prompt and guide him.
The Hartington Commission proposed at the same time to abolish the office
of commander-in-chief, and to create that of a "chief of the staff." This new
officer was to advise the Secretary of State—that is, the Government—upon
all the most important military questions. He was to discuss the strength and
distribution of the army, and the defence of the Empire; to plan the general
arrangements for defence, and to shape the estimates according to his plan.
In a word, he was to perform many of the most important duties of a
commander-in-chief. But he was to be the adviser or assistant, not of a
military commander, but of a civilian governor-general of the army.

An army cannot be directed in war nor commanded in peace under the

immediate authority of a civilian. There must be a military commander, the
obedient servant of the Government, supported by the Government in the
exercise of his powers to discipline and direct the army, and sheltered by the
Government against all such criticism as would weaken his authority or
diminish its own responsibility. The scheme propounded by the Hartington
Commission evaded the cardinal question which has to be settled: that of the
military command of the army in war. War cannot be carried on unless full
and undivided authority is given to the general entrusted by the Government
with the conduct of the military operations. That officer will necessarily be
liable to account to the Government for all that is done, for the design and
for its execution.

The Report of the Commission made no provision whatever for the

command of the army in war. The proposed "chief of the staff" was to be
entrusted during peace with the duty of the design of operations. Had the
Commission's scheme been adopted, the Government would, upon the near
approach of war, still have had to select its commander. The selection must
fall either upon the "chief of the staff" or upon some other person. But no
general worth his salt will be found to stake his own reputation and the fate
of the nation upon the execution of designs supplied to him at second-hand.
No man with a particle of self-respect would undertake the defence of his
country upon the condition that he should conduct it upon a plan as to which
he had never been consulted, and which, at the time of his appointment, it
was too late to modify. Accordingly, if the scheme of the Commission had
been adopted, it would have been necessary to entrust the command in war
to the officer who during peace had been chief of the staff. But this officer
being in peace out of all personal relation with the army could not have the
moral authority which is indispensable for its command. The scheme of the
Hartington Commission could therefore not be adopted, except at the risk of
disaster in the event of war.

While I am revising the proof of this preface come the announcements,

first, that Lord Wolseley is to succeed the Duke of Cambridge, and,
secondly, that though the title of Commander-in-Chief is to be retained, the
duties attaching to the office are to be modified and its authority diminished.

The proposed changes in the status of the Commander-in-Chief show that

the present Government is suffering from the pressure of an anxiety exactly
like that which paralysed Lord Hartington's Commission, while from the
speeches in which the new scheme has been explained the idea of war is
altogether absent. The Government contemplates depriving the Commander-
in-Chief of his authority over the Adjutant-General and the Quartermaster-
General, as well as over the heads of some other military departments.

The Adjutant-General's department embraces among other matters all that

directly concerns the discipline, training, and education of the army; while
such business as the quartering and movements of troops passes through the
office of the Quartermaster-General. These officers are to become the direct
subordinates of the Secretary of State. In other words, the staff at the
headquarters of the army is to be the staff, not of the nominal Commander-
in-Chief, but of the Secretary of State, who is thus to be made the real
Commander-in-Chief of the army.

This is evidently a momentous change, not to be lightly or rashly

approved or condemned. The first duty is to discover, if possible, the
motives by which the Government is actuated in proposing it. Mr. Balfour,
speaking in the House of Commons on the 31st of August, explained the
view of the Government.
 "What," he said, "is the substance and essence of the criticisms passed by
the Harrington Commission upon the War Office system, which has now
been in force in this country for many years? The essence of the criticisms of
the Commissioners was that by having a single Commander-in-Chief,
through whom, and through whom alone, army opinion, army matters, and
army advice would come to the Secretary of State for War, you were, in the
first place, throwing upon the Commander-in-Chief a burden which no
single individual could possibly support; and, secondly, you were practically
destroying the responsibility of the Secretary of State for War, who
nominally is the head of the department. If you put the Secretary of State for
War in direct communication with the Commander-in-Chief alone, I do not
see how the Secretary of State for War can be anything else than the
administrative puppet of the great soldier who is at the head of the army. He
may come down to the House and express the views of that great officer, but
if he is to take official advice from the Commander-in-Chief alone it is
absolutely impossible that the Secretary of State should be really
responsible, and in this House the Secretary of State will be no more than the
mouthpiece of the Commander-in-Chief."

Mr. Balfour's first point is that the burden thrown upon a single
Commander-in-Chief is too great for one man to bear. Marlborough,
Wellington or Napoleon would, perhaps, hardly have accepted this view. But
supposing it were true, the remedy proposed is infinitely worse than the
disease. In 1887 the Royal Commission, over which the late Sir James
Stephen presided, examined with judicial impartiality the duties of the
Secretary of State for War. That Commission in its report wrote as follows:
—

"The first part of the system to be considered is the Secretary of State. On

him we have to observe, first, that the scope of his duties is immense;
secondly, that he performs them under extreme disadvantages. He is charged
with five separate great functions, any one of which would be sufficient to
occupy the whole time of a man of first-rate industry, ability, and
knowledge.
 "First, he is a member of the Cabinet, and a Member of Parliament, in
which capacity he has to give his attention, not only to the matters of his
own department, but to all the leading political questions of the day. He has
to take part in debates on the great topics of discussion, and on many
occasions to speak upon them in his place in Parliament.

"Secondly, he is the head, as has been already observed, of the political

department of the army. He may have to consider, and that at the shortest
notice, the whole conduct of a war; all the important points connected with
an expedition to any part of the globe; political questions like the abolition
of purchase; legislative questions like the Discipline Act, and many others of
the same kind.

"Thirdly, he is the head of the Ordnance Department, which includes all

the questions relating to cannon, small arms, and ammunition, and all the
questions that arise upon the management of four great factories, and the
care of an enormous mass of stores of every description.

"Fourthly, he has to deal with all the questions connected with

fortifications and the commissariat.

"Fifthly, he is responsible for framing the Military Estimates, which

override all the other departments, and regulate the expenditure of from
£16,000,000 to £18,000,000 of public money.

"It is morally and physically impossible that any one man should
discharge all these functions in a satisfactory manner. No one man could
possess either the time or the strength or the knowledge which would be
indispensable for that purpose; but even if such a physical and intellectual
prodigy were to be found, he would have to do his duty under disadvantages
which would reduce him practically to impotence."

If, then, the Commander-in-Chief is overburdened, it is at least certain

that the right way to relieve him cannot possibly consist in adding to the
functions of the Secretary of State.
 The real point of Mr. Balfour's statement of the case is in what follows. If
you have a single Commander-in-Chief through whom, and through whom
alone, army opinion, army matters, and army advice would come to the
Secretary of State, then, according to Mr. Balfour, you practically destroy the
responsibility of the Secretary of State.

It is a mark of the hastiness of debate that the word responsibility has

crept in here. No word in the political vocabulary is so dangerous, because
none is so ambiguous. Properly speaking, a person is said to be responsible
when he is liable to be called to account for his acts, a liability which implies
that he is free to act in one way or another. These two aspects of the term,
the liability and the freedom of choice implied, lead to its use in two
opposite senses. Sometimes responsibility means that a man must answer for
what he does, and sometimes that he may do as he pleases without being
controlled by any one. The word is as often as not a synonym for authority.
When Moltke speaks of the "immeasurable responsibility" of the King of
Prussia, he really means that the King took upon himself as his own acts
decisions of the gravest moment which were prompted by his advisers, and
that by so doing he covered them as against the rest of the world; he did not
mean that the King had to account for his conduct except to his own
conscience and at the bar of history. A Secretary of State for War, in his
relations with the army, wields the whole authority of the Government. The
only thing which he cannot do is to act in opposition to the wishes of his
colleagues, for if he did he would immediately cease to be Secretary of
State. As long as they are agreed with him he is the master of the army. But
his liability to be called to account is infinitely small. The worst that can
happen to him is that if the party to which he belongs should lose its
majority in the House of Commons the Cabinet of which he is a member
may have to resign. That is an event always possible quite apart from his
conduct, and his actions will as a rule not bring it about unless for other
reasons it is already impending. Whenever, therefore, the phrase "the
responsibility of the Secretary of State" occurs, we ought to substitute for it
the more precise words: "the power of the Cabinet to decide any matter as it
pleases, subject to the chance of its losing its majority."

What Mr. Balfour deprecates is a single Commander-in-Chief, and it is

important to grasp the real nature of his objection. If the whole business of
the army be conceived to be a single department of which the Commander-
in-Chief is the head, so that the authority of the Secretary of State extends to
no other matters than those which lie within the jurisdiction of the
Commander-in-Chief, then undoubtedly the Secretary of State and the
Commander-in-Chief are each of them in a false position, for one of them is
unnecessary. The Secretary of State must either simply confirm the
Commander-in-Chief's decisions, in which case his position as superior
authority is a mere form, or he must enter into the reasons for and against
and decide afresh, in which case the Commander-in-Chief becomes
superfluous. It is bad organization to have two men, one over the other, both
to do the same business.

Mr. Balfour's objection to this arrangement is, however, not that it sins
against the principles of good organization, but that it practically abolishes
the Secretary of State. It leaves the decision of questions which arise within
the War Office and the army in the hands of a person who is outside the
Cabinet. In this way it diminishes the power of the Cabinet, which rests
partly upon the solidarity of that body, and partly upon the practice by which
every branch of Government business is under the control of one or other of
its members.

Both these objections appear to me to rest upon false premises. I shall

show presently that the duties of the Secretary of State must necessarily
include matters which do not properly come within the scope of a
Commander-in-Chief, and I cannot see how the authority of the Cabinet to
manage the army rationally would be impaired by a War Office with a
military head, the subordinate of the Secretary of State.

But both objections, supposing them to be valid, would be overcome by

making the Commander-in-Chief Secretary of State—that is, by abolishing
the office of Secretary of State for War, and entrusting his duties to the
Commander-in-Chief as a member of the Cabinet. Why, then, does not the
Government adopt this plan, which at first sight appears so simple? There is
a good reason. The Cabinet is a committee of peers and members of
Parliament selected by the leader of a party from among his followers. The
bond between its members is a party bond, and their necessary main purpose
is to retain their majority in the House of Commons. A military Commander-
in-Chief means an officer selected as the representative, not of a party, but of
a subject. He is the embodiment of strategical wisdom, and to secure that
strategical knowledge and judgment receive due attention in the councils of
government is the purpose of his official existence. To make him a member
of the Cabinet would be to disturb the harmony of that body by introducing
into it a principle other than that of party allegiance, and the harmony could
not be restored except either by subordinating strategy to party, which would
be a perversion of the Commander-in-Chief, or by subordinating party to
strategy, a sacrifice which the leaders of a party will not make except under
the supreme pressure of actual or visibly impending war.

The preliminary decision, then, which may be taken as settled—for the

other party if it had been in power would certainly have come to the same
conclusion—is that no military officer, either within or without the Cabinet,
is to have in his hands the whole management of the army; the absolute
power of the Cabinet must be preserved, and therefore no military officer is
to have more than departmental authority; the threads are not to be united in
any hands other than those of the Secretary of State. This determination
appears to me most unfortunate, for to my eye the time seems big with great
events requiring a British Government to attach more importance to
preparation for conflict than to the rigorous assertion of Cabinet supremacy.
Be that as it may, the practical question is whether the proposed sub-division
of the business of the War Office into departments is a good or a bad one. I
think it incurably bad, because it follows no principle of classification
inherent in the nature of the work to be done.

To find the natural and necessary classification of duties in the

management of an army we must look not at the War Office but at war.
Suppose the country to be engaged in a serious war, in which the army, or a
large portion of it is employed against an enemy, who it may be hoped will
not have succeeded in invading this island. In that case we can distinguish
clearly between two functions. There must be an authority directing against
the enemy the troops in the field; a general with full powers, implicitly
obeyed by all the officers and officials accompanying his army. There must
also be an administrative officer at home, whose function will be to procure
and convey to the army in the field all that it requires—food, ammunition,
clothing and pay, fresh men and fresh horses to replace casualties. This
officer at home cannot be the same person as the general in the field; for the
two duties must be carried on in two different places at the same time. The
two functions, moreover, correspond to two different arts or branches of the
military art. The commander in the field requires to excel in generalship, or
the art of command; the head of the supply department at home requires to
be a skilled military administrator in the sense not of a wielder of discipline
or trainer of troops, but of a clever buyer, a producer and distributor on a
large scale. Neither of these officers can be identical with the Secretary of
State, whose principal duty in war is to mediate between the political
intentions of the Government and the military action conducted by the
commander in the field. This duty makes him the superior of the
commander; while the officer charged with military supply, though he need
not be the formal subordinate of the commander, must yet conform his
efforts to the needs of the army in the field.

There are many important matters which cannot be confined either to the
department of command or to that of supply. Under this head fall the terms
of service for soldiers, the conditions of recruiting, the regulations for the
appointment and promotion of officers. These are properly the subjects of
deliberation in which not only military, but civil opinions and interests must
be represented; for their definition the Secretary of State will do well to refer
to a general council of his assistants, and the ultimate settlement will require
the judgment of the Cabinet, and sometimes also the sanction of Parliament.
In time of war it is generally necessary quickly to levy extra men, and to
drain into the army a large part of the resources of the country. Such
measures must be thought out and arranged in advance during peace, for the
greatest care is required in all decisions which involve the appropriation by
the State of more than the usual share of the energies, the time and the
money of its citizens. Regulations of this kind can seldom be framed except
as the result of the deliberations of a council of military and civil officers of
experience. These, then, are the rational sub-divisions of army business.
There is the department of command, embracing the discipline and training
of the troops, their organization as combatant bodies, the arrangement of
their movements and distribution in peace and war, and all that belongs to
the functions of generalship. These matters form the proper domain of a
Commander-in-Chief. Side by side with them is the department of supply,
which procures for the commander the materials out of which his fighting
machine is put together and kept in condition. Harmony between them is
secured by the authority of the Government, wielded by the Secretary of
State, who regulates according to the state of the national policy and of the
exchequer the amount to be spent by each department, and who presides
over the great council which lays down the conditions under which the
services of the citizens in money, in property, or in person are to be claimed
by the State for its defence.

The examination, then, of the conditions of war, and the application,

during peace, of the distribution of duties which war must render necessary,
lead to the true solution of the difficulty raised by Mr. Balfour. The internal
affairs of the army are indeed one department, but the position of head of
that department, while it could properly be filled by a Commander-in Chief,
is not and cannot be identical with that of the minister who personifies the
Cabinet in relation to the army. The minister ought to be concerned chiefly
with the connexion between the national policy and the military means of
giving it effect. The intention to make the Secretary of State head of the
military department seems to me to prove that the Government really takes
no account of what should be his higher duties. The lack of the conception of
a national policy is thus about to embarrass the military management of the
army.

It is not my object here to consider in detail how the principles of

organization for war should be applied to the British army. That subject has
been fully treated by Sir Charles Dilke and myself in the last chapter of our
"Imperial Defence," a chapter which has not been criticised except with
approval. But I am concerned to show that the German practice cannot at
any point be quoted in support either of the recommendations of the
Hartington Commission or of the proposals now announced by the
Government, which to any one who regards them from the point of view of
the nation, that is of the defence of the Empire, must appear to be at once
unnecessary, rash and inopportune.

3, MADEIRA ROAD,
STREATHAM, S.W.
September 3rd, 1895.

[1] See in particular the passage in Moltke, Gesammelte Schriften, V. 298-9, which
I have translated in an essay entitled "The Brain of the Navy," p. 28.
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