Recent Army and Naval administration, as the public have seen, requires little further comment here. The hundreds of thousands of pounds absolutely squandered in surplus rations, billeting, pay, and transport, etc., should have impressed the minds of observers in a manner that this generation is never likely to forget. A business man in each department, with a free hand to economise and arrange its details, in a business-like way, would have saved the country the salaries paid to them ten thousand times over, with a gigantic surplus to spare.
The British Intelligence Department probably suffered least of any in this respect. Its actual managing chief never wasted a shilling where he could personally see a way of saving it. To my knowledge he never overpaid anyone, whilst he was not at all adverse to using the persuasive argument of patriotism, in order to get a mass of useful work done for nothing at all. To quote an instance. It was the case of a man who, at his country's call, had sacrificed an income of considerably over £1,000 per annum, together with all his home and business interests, and who in the chief's absence had accepted a thankless and a dangerous task on the active foreign executive at a remuneration less than he had been paying a confidential clerk.
The chief on his return to office did not hesitate to ask him to waive altogether his remuneration, and to pay out of his own pocket twenty-five per cent. of his personal travelling expenses in addition! Loyally he agreed, and for months he thus served, although those in authority above him showed no sign of appreciation or gratitude afterwards for the sacrifice.
If other Government departments were half as careful over their expenditure as the Secret Service, the British public would not have much cause to find fault nor even to grumble. But what hampered its efficiency, and was neither fair, nor politic, nor economic, was the policy of the Foreign Office, which permitted others, in no way whatsoever connected with the Service, or with the Intelligence, to interfere (during 1914 and 1915) with its work and with members of its executive both at home and abroad. This was not the worst of it. Not only was the organisation of a whole and important branch of the department on two occasions brought to a complete standstill, owing to the interference of one vainly conceited incompetent who had collected a string of high-sounding qualifications behind his name, but he caused money to be scattered in thousands where hundreds, and probably tens, or a little judicious entertaining, would have been more than sufficient. If these monies were debited to the Secret Service Department, such a wrong ought to be righted. In due course the colossal indiscretions of this interfering bungler involved matters in such a dangerous tangle that he apparently lost his head, and for a period of time was quite inaccessible for business. On recovery he coolly announced that he should wash his hands entirely of all Secret Service affairs. Imagine the feelings of the patient chiefs of the Foreign Secret Service Department. They had silently sat for months watching the efforts of their captured staff hampered at every turn whilst they were persistently building up a sound, practical, useful organisation, which a fool and his folly overturned, like a house of cards, in one day. They had been actually stopped from controlling the movements of their own men, yet they were responsible for their pay and their expenses; whilst possibly they had had a heavy load of extravagant outside expenditure heaped upon their department without any equivalent advantage. They had been compelled to endure this indignity, because, as Service officers, they dared not, for the sake of their then present position and possibly their future, openly remonstrate or criticise, or even report the bare facts concerning the all-too-palpable incompetence of this somewhat Powerful Gentleman who had insisted on poking his officious and inefficacious nose into a department which did not concern him, and the existence of which it was his loyal duty to ignore.