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Appendix B: The War and India Offices The War Office The War Office was established in 1661 to impose civilian control over military affairs. Until 1855 it was run by a ‘‘secretary at war,’’ a junior minister, under a ‘‘secretary for war,’’ the senior minister. Duties were variously distributed between the army and civilians. The commanderin -chief and his staff were known as the Horse Guards, named after the mounted troops who guarded the queen. The War Office was located on Horse Guards Avenue. The secretary at war was the army’s spokesman in Parliament. The War Office’s thirteen departments were staffed by civilians responsible to Parliament. All this made for a complicated machine, difficult to mobilize for a unified operation. In view of the inefficiencies particularly revealed in the years 1854-56 of the Crimean War, the Whig Lord Panmure, secretary of state for war, perceptively declared: ‘‘The lamentable results which have attended our present expedition . . . [are] solely to be attributed to the want of proper control by a single minister over every department of the army.’’1 Henceforth all administrative duties were consolidated under a single minister, the (civilian) secretary of state for war, now a Cabinet post, at the head of the departments. The War Office now had two permanent under secretaries of state, one military and one civilian. While this reform did somewhat streamline the chaotic administrative structure and strengthen Parliamentary control, it did not eliminate the tensions between the secretary of state and the military men, nor did the further series of reforms between 1858 and 1905 mean much amelioration in that respect. Relations between the army and its civilian minister were further complicated by the fact that 1 Memorandum of February 1855, quoted by John Sweetman, War and Administration : The Significance of the Crimean War for the British Army 107. / 993 for much of this period the commander-in-chief was a high-ranking royal, the duke of Cambridge, but the minister a mere Mr or peer. As well, the commander-in-chief had the advantage of long service (the duke of Cambridge served thirty-nine years), while ministers lasted only a few years, or even months. In 1870 the Horse Guards and the War Office combined into a single department under the control of the secretary of state for war. Tensions with Parliament remained, as with the India Office, when both offices were called upon to co-operate, for instance, on sanitary measures to be implemented in the army. The secretary of state and the commander-in-chief continued to operate quite independently, underscoring the uneasy relations between the civil and the military. Some progress was made in 1906 when the office of the commander-in-chief was abolished and a general staff was established as co-ordinating body. Finally in 1964 a ministry of defence emerged, with a secretary of state for war at its head. The Crimean War had created a national emergency that allowed those eager to see reforms in the army to rally support for their cause. Administrative changes were made during the war but the postwar period was characterized by apathy. However, a certain momentum for the betterment of the health conditions of the troops was evidenced after the appalling reports that had reached the public from abroad. The Mutiny of 1857-58 added to the conviction that reforms of the army in general, and of its sanitary conditions in particular, were imperative. This is the point at which Nightingale and Sidney Herbert began to orchestrate their actions. Their collaboration on administrative reform, begun in 1854, continued untill his death in 1861, embodied in the two royal commissions on sanitary measures for the army (1857-58 and 1859-63). Thereafter Nightingale continued to have influence through various collaborators and friends. Meanwhile, the Barrack and Hospital Improvement Commission, one of the four subcommissions struck by the first royal commission, produced reports on improving the sanitary conditions of the army (1861, 1863, etc.). In 1865 it was renamed the ‘‘Army Sanitary Commission /Committee,’’ and kept working toward the same goals. Along with the Army Medical Department, this is the committee which Nightingale deployed her energies to move; it was her point of entry into the army establishment for her campaign of furthering health reforms for the troops. She had here the co-operation of such people as John Sutherland , Douglas Galton, J.J. Frederick...

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