organization, being usually based upon purely military considerations,
have thus much, indeed almost all, in common. _Administration_ differs
from them in one important respect. While the methods of command and
organization are the result of the accumulated experience of many armies
through many hundred years, the central administration in each case is
the product of the historical evolution of the particular country, and
is dependent upon forms of government, constitutions and political
parties. Thus France, after 1870, remodelled the organization of her
forces in accordance with the methods which were presumed to have given
Germany the victory, but the headquarters staff at Paris is very
different in all branches from that of Berlin. Great Britain adopted
German tactics, and to some extent even uniform, but the Army Council
has no counterpart in the administration of the German emperor's forces.
The first point for consideration, therefore, is, what is the ultimate,
and what is the proximate, authority supervising the administration? The
former is, in most countries, the people or its representatives in
parliament, for it is in their power to stop supplies, and without money
the whole military fabric must crumble. The constitutional chief of the
army is the sovereign, or, in republics, the president, but in most
countries the direct control of army matters by the representatives of
the people extends over all affairs into which the well-being of the
civil population, the expenditure of money, alleged miscarriages of
military justice, &c., enter, and it is not unusual to find grand
strategy, and even the technical deficiencies of a field-gun or rifle,
the subject of interpellation and debate. The peculiar influence of the
sovereign is in what may be termed patronage (that is, the selection of
officers to fill important positions and the general supervision of the
officer-corps), and in the fact that loyalty is the foundation of the
discipline and soldierly honour which it is the task of the officers to
inculcate into their men. In all cases the head of the state is _ipso
facto_ the head of the army. The difference between various systems may
then be held to depend on the degree of power allowed to or held by him.
This reacts upon the central administration of the army, and is the
cause of the differences of system alluded to. For the civil chief of
the executive is not necessarily a soldier, much less an expert and
capable soldier; he must, therefore, be provided with technical
advisers. The chief of the general staff is often the principal of
these, though in some cases a special commander-in-chief, or the
minister for war, or, as in France and England, a committee or council,
has the duty of advising the executive on technical matters.