given by him are so apt that I take the liberty of quoting him in part. He said:

We ought to have some way in the system of our government to fix direct responsibility and you cannot fix responsibility if the power is too widely scattered. I would put it in the executive. I would make him responsible at the outset. Some persons object that we should not deprive the representatives of this right to loosen up the purse strings, but the universal condition in this country today is not what must safeguard the rights of the people to get money for things. The whole curse of our condition is that everybody is doing his utmost to get it and succeeds. Now if there were some way by which that could be stopped, it would do what is done in the government where they have a responsible government with a budget system.

By an Executive Budget the whole plan is placed before the legislature and before the people of the state at an early date, by one who has had full opportunity for investigation and whose responsibility is in the open, while under the system heretofore prevailing in our state there is no plan; there is no well-defined program; there is nothing to criticise, because these appropriation bills as heretofore made up do not take definite form, until too late for any intelligent or effective criticism. The public does not know their contents and few members do outside of one or two men who control the conduct of the bill.

I know it has been said that the giving of such power to the governor "smacks of monarchy and makes him a dictator." In this country there need be no fear of that, no fear that the Executive Budget will make him an invincible power. Such will not be the case. It can be a case of weakness rather than strength. With our amendment he has to come in the open forum and defend his recommendations. Everything is in the limelight and invisible or irresponsible government will become a thing of the past. There at least need be no fear in my own state of Maryland of any governor becoming a dictator or perpetuating himself in power, for no governor since the Civil War has ever been re-elected in our state.

For the first time in our state the budget gives us a concrete statement of our fiscal condition and a concrete statement of all our revenues and expenditures in every detail. So far I have heard no complaint. The responsibility for expenditures is fully fixed. I am confident that the Executive Budget, in our state at least,

RESPONSIBLE LEADERSHIP AND RESPONSIBLE

CRITICISM1

BY FREDERICK CLEVELAND

Secretary, Industrial Service and Equipment Company, Boston

T

HE permanent good humanity will get from this war will

not be a victory of democracy over Prussianism; but a victory of democracy over its own weakness. Prussian "Kultur," like the pneumo-coccus, is dangerous only because its victims are not fit. Democracy has been slack-we may even say slovenly-in its institutional habits. What gives to this war on Prussianism its greatest import is not alone the fact that we must at once so order our lives and adapt our institutions that we may be strong enough to resist attack, but that before we can become strong we must find out the cause of our weakness.

In this quest we may easily be misled. For example: During the last three or four weeks the daily press has carried as news an attack made by ex-President Roosevelt on the Wilson administration. What is featured by Mr. Roosevelt is an alleged attempt on the part of President Wilson, through Mr. Burleson and others, to muzzle the press. These are some of the headlines:

"T. R. Says Administration is Trying to Cover Its Own Weakness."

"Wilson Stifles Honest Criticism."

"Administration Has Used Its Power to Stifle Publicity." "Constitutional Right of Free Press Denied."

In this colloquy two charges are made: First, that the administration has been weak-that there has been confusion and waste at a time when every ounce of man-power and material resource is needed to win the war. Second, that the President, under the claim of need to exercise military censorship, is using the same methods of repression and control over the press that is practiced by the Prussians.

An appeal is made by Mr. Roosevelt to the underlying ideals of democracy. The assumption which lies back of his criticism. is that our executive leadership shall be strong; that the govern

1 Read at the National Conference on War Economy, June 5, 1918.

ment shall not be wasteful; that the executive and his cabinet shall be held to strict account before the public for his every act and proposal. But Mr. Roosevelt's criticism is personal. The idea conveyed to the public is that in his opinion such weakness and waste as has obtained in handling the work of this great war has been due to the personnel of those running the government, and that now it is trying to cover up its own shortcomings.

The significant fact is this: that the one thing this "made-inGermany" war is doing and will continue to do is to help us to see that in our institution building we have done violence to the very ideals to which Mr. Roosevelt appeals.

To show that our essential weakness is institutional let us remove ourselves from the realm of personal controversy. Let us go back to the Spanish-American War, when Mr. Roosevelt was in authority, first as Assistant Secretary of the Navy, later as a military commander giving orders at the front. At that time there was the same confusion and waste in raising and equipping a small army of 200,000 men that there has been during the last year in raising an army ten times as large.

To appreciate what happened at that time, let us read from one of the most matter-of-fact, painstaking writers of history. Showing the embarrassment under which the McKinley administration labored, Sargent says:

Nearly everything had to be created; clothing, tentage, wagons, ambulances, arms—in fact everything in the way of uniform and equipment— had to be contracted for or manufactured. . . . Wagons, ambulances and horses could not be purchased immediately in sufficient number; great difficulty was experienced in obtaining sufficient canvas to supply the army with tents; and no khaki cloth for uniforms was to be had in the United States. All this resulted, of course, in great inconvenience to the troops. The volunteers had to accept an inferior rifle with black powder; a number of regiments could obtain no tents; the entire army was short of transportation; and many soldiers had to go to the tropics and fight in winter clothing.

The confusion in leadership was appalling-and what is more, profiteering had a suggestion of venality that today is almost wholly lacking. There was more of the spirit of gang loyalty and less of the spirit of individual devotion to a great national cause. There was more of the confusion and waste and wantonness of

tion was not to be charged to lack of quality in President McKinley-not even to Mark Hanna.

Consider the kind of leadership we then had. On the supply side of the military establishment there were twelve different bureaus or offices, which had been created-not by the president as the responsible institutional military leader for his assistance and guidance-but established by Congress. Congress using its legislative powers had violated the spirit of the Constitution, which makes the president, as commander-in-chief of the army and navy, responsible to the people. And it set up against the president a bureaucratic feudalism; one lord was given jurisdiction over the buying and making of guns and ammunitionresponsible to a committee of Congress; another over buying or making clothing and equipage and providing quarters-responsible to a committee of Congress; another bought food-responsible to a committee of Congress; another bought and dispensed medicine-responsible to a committee of Congress; and so on through the entire list.

These functionalized, bureaucratic, feudal lords did not look to their titular superior, the leader chosen by and responsible to the nation, for powers and policies. They looked to irresponsible committees. And because of the independence which was thus given, each chief built around himself a bureaucratic wall that even the constitutional chief executive himself could not get over or break through without wrecking limitations and provisos that had grown up in statute books as thick as moss on the shady side of a moat. In violation of the spirit of the Constitution, and of every ideal of democracy, Congress had taken upon itself control over each bureau of the administration. It had taken the initiative and the leadership that belonged to the executive in any scheme of responsible government and divided it among over a hundred different standing committees which, sitting behind closed doors, became both the real Congress and the real head of the administration. This was the institutional provision for leadership that existed at the time of the Spanish-American War. And it still existed when we entered into this war against Prussianismnot alone in the national government, but in most of our state governments as well.

That we got out of the Spanish-American War without enormous sacrifice of blood and treasure, and loss of our national

prestige, is due to the fact that a much less effective, moribund leadership had grown up in autocratic Spain. Consider what might have happened to Shafter's 17,000 men if the Spanish army of 196,000 men then in Cuba, more than twelve to one of the American forces landed, had been under the direction of a Foch, a Haig, or a Hindenburg. Shafter debarked his army without opposition, his only loss, caused by accident, being two men and a few mules, and the only difficulty experienced being his lack of debarkation facilities. So destitute was the army of means of landing that it was necessary to throw the mules and horses overboard and make them swim for shore. Although there had been ample time and opportunity for the Spanish generals to have brought their army into action between the 224 of June and the 1st of July, Spanish records show that they had only 9,000 in the vicinity of Santiago. The Spanish soldier proved a good fighter, but he lacked leadership. If he had had good leadership it is thought that it would have taken not less than a half million men and possibly two years to reduce the Island of Cuba. Judged by results at the Battle of El Caney, this seems a conservative estimate. The only reason for our early success in the Spanish-American War was that the enemy was worse off for leadership than we were. Victory came to us by default. But we can look forward to no defaults under Prussian leadership.

Let us follow the Spanish-American War experience a little further, for it is helpful. Let us follow it into the administration of Mr. Roosevelt, who saw and felt the lack of unity of direction and control. As illustrative, let us consider the futility of Mr. Roosevelt's effort to put unity of direction and control into the military establishment-due to a popular appreciation of the need. The enormous cost of the Cuban campaign, short though it was, the confusion and waste on every side, was the reason urged by Mr. Root in 1903 for organizing the General Staff.

Yielding to this influence, an Act of Congress was placed on the statute books. This did not break down bureaucratic walls. Even with Mr. Roosevelt as constitutional commander-in-chief and Mr. Root as secretary of war, these old bureaucratic, feudal monopolies were protected by Congress as true representatives of our old laissez faire philosophy of government. These were so firmly intrenched that it took fifteen years and then several