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".
In May 1921, Conservative peer Lord of Siw-′ar offered a different interpretation. He attacked the bill on the grounds of eliminated checks and balances within the military to prevent "activities without authority", that is the military would be allowed to develop policies without the intervention of the civil service, which he construed as prejudicial to the interest of unity of authority, as emanating from the Cabinet. He said the current system permitted the Secretary of State to retain the "initial and final say" in any activity in the military, by virtue of his jurisdiction over a large number of military agencies. As such, he could "nip everything in the bud". But under the new system, various departments could consort with each other and present a co-ordinated policy the government might find difficult to reject arbitrarily, due to lack of information or a prejudiced presentation. The Lord of Snjang-lang asked if he believed the military should not have the power "to put heads together and produce good ideas", while Siw-′ar said that it should only do so "at the instigation of the government". Snjang-lang asked if the military should simply not be allowed to think things that do not appear in civil servants' minds, to which Siw-′ar said "any sound idea is amenable to both civilian and military minds". Snjang-lang emphasized that the new laws would only allow the army "the power to think".
Then, the Conservative peer Lord of Bran considered the law from the angle of public reception. He argued that the new law would allow the military to influence public thinking, if they were to appear to produce ideas better than the government's. This, he said, would threaten its supremacy. Snjang-lang asked how this might come to be, at which Bran replied that if the government and military were at odds, and the military view were proven correct, it would damage the reputation of the government. Snjang-lang asked if Bran believed the military should not receive credit for good strategies, and Bran said "not at the expense of the Cabinet" which "must never be seen as less insightful than the military". Snjang-lang gently implied that Bran was far too suspicious, and the government should not, at any rate, have the power to silence contrary voices in a free society. He also argued that, since the military was not empowered to undertake any substantive action without government approval, the ultimate credit would still lie with the government. Bran replied that the "supremacy of the civil government" was fundamental to any stable country, to which Snjang-land rejoined that the "supremacy must not be based on the elimination of superior ideas". Snjang-lang concluded the debate saying that the military had no influence over public thinking, since they were sworn to secrecy, and the government was fully in the position to take "all credit" for any of the Army's original thinking.
The Lord of Snjang-lang said in July 1921,
Under the current system, there is no statutory barrier between military and civil officers. One can become the other, and vice versa. Both Conservatives and Liberals are loathe at the prospect of aggressive military officers rising through the ranks and then becoming a civil servant, offering pernicious and deleterious advice to ministers, turning Themiclesian into a hostile, disagreeable state. They differ in their respective solutions this nightmare. Conservatives propose that military officers should not be allowed to be promoted to positions of importance and fill those with civil servants, who can be depended upon to despise the military and thus remain against its empowerment. This prevents military officers from having improper powers, solving the problem in one way. Liberals propose that military officers should be allowed full freedom to study and form educated opinions but not be allowed to cross over into the civil service. This permits them to offer their considered and professional opinion but prevents them from usurping the power of civil servants to advise the minister on larger questions. This also prevents military officers from having improper powers, solving the problem another way. To my mind, the Liberal solution is superior, because it allows military officers to be of good utility and prevent civil servants from making costly mistakes in a foreign environment.
The Conservative position is founded on fear, ignorance, and prejudice, disguised as the so-called "social order" or "stability", by suppressing everything that is different and calling them evil; the Liberal position is based on an open and rational analysis of the relationship between civil and military authorities and their respective strengths, together considered for the maximal benefit of the citizenry. The House of Lords, of course, must decide wether it will accept the decision of the elected representatives of a great and intelligent people or pander to the unreasonable fears of a relatively small group of narrow-minded peers that have not been able to offer any argument to the contrary.
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.