uction of material, nor was it
recognized that naval officers are by their training and experience
better fitted to deal with such matters on a large scale than are
military officers, except perhaps officers in the Artillery and Royal
Engineers. Whatever may be the case in the future, the Navy in pre-war
days was so much more dependent on material than the Army as to make
questions relating to naval material of far greater importance that was
the case with military material. This fact is apt to be forgotten by
those writers on naval affairs who think that an intimate knowledge of
questions relating to naval material _and its use_ is of little
importance. I trust that this belief will never become general in the
service, for the naval officer who is not familiar with the design and
production of material is handicapped when he comes to use it.

Ignorance of the great experience of the Admiralty in handling problems
of production and of the past success of Admiralty methods in this
respect gave rise to a good deal of misconception. The fact that it had
been necessary to form a separate Ministry (that of Munitions) to deal
with the production of war material for the Army probably fostered the
idea that matters at the Admiralty should be altered in a similar
direction.

The post of Deputy Controller of Armament Production was created under
the new organization, and all matters concerning the production of guns,
gun-mountings, projectiles, cordite, torpedoes, mines, paravanes and all
other war material was placed under him. I have dealt earlier in this
chapter with the questions of design and inspection over which some
disagreement arose.

I was not conscious that the new organization succeeded in speeding up
armament production during 1917, and during the latter part of the year
I was much concerned with the delays in ordnance production as revealed
during 1917 and as exposed by the forecasts for 1918.

It is very possible, on the other hand, that in the case of mines the
results were good. The old Admiralty organization had not been equipped
to deal with such an immense number of mines as were on order, and
although a large organization for their production was started by Sir
Lionel Halsey, when Fourth Sea Lord, with the assistance of Admiral
Fitzherbert and Captain Litchfield-Speer, it had not been sufficiently
long at work for an opinion to be given as to whether the results in
production would have been as good as u