Army Acts (1921)
The Army Acts refer to a set of legislations of the Themiclesian Parliament that restructured the Consolidated Army Service, establishing its pre-PSW structure. It is widely regarded as a follow-up to the Civil and Military Services Segregation Act (1915).
Titles
The full and summary titles of the Army Acts were:
- An Act for the Provision of Divers Reformations and Regulations of the Hên-lang Guards, the Middle Guards, the Gweng-hljunh Guards, the Gwreng-ngjarh Guards, the East Guards, and Several Others, commonly called the Royal Guards Act.
- An Act for the Establishment of the Consolidated Army, commonly called the Consolidated Army Act.
- An Act to Establish and Regulate and National Army Reserves, commonly called the Reserve Army Act.
- An Act to Regulate Prefectural and Regional Militias and Facilities by Previous Statutes and Ordinances to Them Attached or Related and Other Purposes, commonly called the Prefectural and Regional Militia Act.
- An Act for the Provision and Unification of Certain Military Academies and Their Regulation in Some Operations and Other Purposes, commonly called the Military Schools Act.
- An Act for Divers Purposes (4), commonly called the Military Discipline and Procedure Act.
- An Act to Exempt Certain Parts of Consolidated Army Service From Ordinary Orders of the Civil Service and to Grant Certain Powers to the Secretary of State for War, commonly called the Exemption of Administrative Orders Act.
- An Act for the Dissolution of the Capital Defence Force and Enlargement of the Inner Region Militia, commonly called the Capital Defence Force Act.
- An Act for Standardization of the Powers of the Secretary of State for War Relative to Certain Members of the Consolidated Army Service, commonly called the Commanding Powers Act.
- An Act Regulating the Secondary Staff to the Secretary of State for War, commonly called the Ministerial Staff Reform Act.
Content
The contents of the several acts are discussed below.
Royal Guards Act
The Royal Guards Act abolished the offices the Marshal of the Guard for all palaces except the Hên-lang Palace, which was renamed as the Marshal of Royal Guards. While the Marshal was nominally retained as a partly-civilian office, the title of "General of Royal Guards" was also granted to him, making him permanently subordinate to the Secretary of State for War, rather than the Cabinet Office. The separate marshals for the guards at the other palaces were replaced with colonelcies, which were explicitly stated to be military offices.
Consolidated Army Act
The Consolidated Army Act sub-grouped parts of the Consolidated Army Service as a standing army and named the Secretary of State for War as "Colonel-General of the Consolidated Army". The word "Colonel-General", which is a translation, should be read as "most senior colonel", since the highest-ranking officers in the Consolidated Army were colonels.
Reserve Army Act
The Reserve Army Act listed certain militia units that were characterized by frequent musters and higher degrees of training as a "Reserve Army" and placed them under the direction of the Secretary of State for War. This abolished prefectural jurisdiction over these units, hence the name "national reserve".
Prefectural and Regional Militias Act
The Prefectural and Regional Militias Act allowed the Secretary of State for War to inspect the regular musters of militia units and to lay down recommended standards in training. It also permitted officers to be "lent out" by prefectural authorities to other prefectures, so that experience could be shared.
Military Schools Act
The Military Schools Act gave recognition to schools for training support officers in various disciplines, mostly supplanting the master-apprentice style training that had been practiced in departments like medicine, veterinary medicine, and convalescence. This law also liberated these professional departments from their dependence on analogous civilian organizations, such as medical colleges.
Military Discipline and Procedure Act
The Military Discipline and Procedure Act prohibited caning as a disciplinary measure, which had fallen into disuse, and officially allowed fines to be remitted in lieu. It also granted militiamen and regular soldiers a right to appeal to higher officers and to have adequate legal counselling when facing serious charges. Equally, it established military prosecutors in some units that had the exclusive power to indict servicepersons for serious offences. It also established limits to collective responsibility in some types of offences.
Exemption from Administrative Orders Act
The Exemption from Administrative Orders Act allowed most military agencies to communicate with the Secretary of State for War without going through civilian bodies that were technically their superiors.
Capital Defence Force Act
The Capital Defence Force Act dissolved the Capital Defence Force as a force separately responsible to the Secretary of State for War, assigning its units to the Consolidated Army. This act was passed in consequence of the generalization of "units of ordinary application", such as general infantry and cavalry units, under the assumption that forces with regional focus were inefficient.
Commanding Powers Act
The Commanding Powers Act allowed the Secretary of State for War to bypass the Cabinet Secretary and ignore certain formalities to give certain types of orders. While the definitions were not completely clear, it appears the intention of the legislation was to distinguish between operational authority and administrative authority. This law also abolished the last vestiges of the regional segregation of certain units, allowing them to move across prefectural boundaries without an act of parliament so permitting.
Ministerial Staff Reform Act
The Ministerial Staff Reform Act allowed the Secretary of State for War to ignore some rules of the civil service in appointing staff officers.
Legislative process
The laws were chaperoned through parliament during the brief Liberal premiership of Rjuk Mjo between 1921-1922. As Rjuk's government did not enjoy a large majority, he was quite careful to divide what was originally envisioned as a wholesale reform to the Consolidated Army Service as ten separate reforms, which could be debated separately in face of stern Conservative opposition. As expected, the Commons Conservatives were ambivalent, while the House of Lords was up in arms in opposition over some of the bills. Conservative lords described the bills as "counter-constitutional", "unnecessary", and "dangerous", believing the 1915 act already produced a fully-modern army that needed no further revision. Liberal lords demonstrated to the contrary that Themiclesia's army was still "in pieces" while other states had highly-integrated and professionalized forces. They further contended that the current structure still permitted "far too much space for discretion" that undermined the benefits of instutionalization.
The Lord of Snjang-lang (L) commented quite famously that Themiclesia was the only country in the world where it is not possible to speak of "the army" because it had several that had distinct objectives. He then asserted that the set of bills "presented no challenge whatever to the authority of parliament or enabled military officers to make any decision without the approval of the Secretary of State for War, who was responsible to parliament anyway". Questioned how, he explained that the legislation would "merely enable them to make more educated and considered opinions and present them to the government, because consolidation puts minds together, and more minds are better than fewer". The Lord of Hwjei (C) replied, "It is not the custom of this country to allow military officers [without a civilian background] to make suggestions." He also said to the house that the Conservative Party intended to "arrest any and all reforms to the armed forces, fully accepting their current state as adequate". As in 1912, the Conservative lords were unable to offer effective counter-arguments, but this time they were criticized in the press for "blocking the bills for no reason, not even personal interest".
After much negotiation, the Conservative lords abstained from voting, allowing the Liberals to carry the bills one-by-one, by the end of 1921. Emperor Goi assented to the first eight of the bills but passed away that year. The remainder of the bills were assented to by Empress Dowager Hruh-′an, on behalf of Emperor L′jabh-tsung, in his minority.