Sir Edward Carson, on leaving the Admiralty, was succeeded by Sir Eric Geddes as First Lord.  Sir Eric had been brought into the Admiralty in May, 1917, in circumstances which I will describe later. (Vide Chapter X.) One of his first steps as First Lord which affected Admiralty organization was the appointment of a Deputy First Sea Lord.  This appointment was frankly made more as a matter of expediency than because any real need had been shown for the creation of such an office.  It is unnecessary here to enter into the circumstances which led to the appointment to which I saw objections, owing to the difficulty of fitting into the organization an officer bearing the title of Deputy First Sea Lord.

Vice-Admiral Sir Rosslyn Wemyss—­who had come to England for the purpose of conferring with the Admiralty before taking up the post of British Commander-in-Chief in the Mediterranean—­was selected by the First Lord as Deputy First Sea Lord.

Shortly after assuming office as First Lord, Sir Eric Geddes expressed a wish for a further consideration of the question of Admiralty organization.  To this end he appointed a joint War Office and Admiralty Committee to compare the two organizations.

Having received the report of the Committee, the First Lord and I both formulated ideas for further reorganization.  My proposals, so far as they concerned the Naval Staff, were conceived on the general lines of an extension of the organization already adopted since my arrival at the Admiralty, but I also stated that the time had arrived when the whole Admiralty organization should be divided more distinctly into two sides, viz., the Operational side and the Materiel or Administrative side, and indicated that the arrangement existing in the time of the old Navy Board might be largely followed, in order that questions of Operations and Materiel should be quite clearly separated.  This, indeed, was the principle of the Staff organization which I had adopted in the Grand Fleet, and I was anxious to extend it to the Admiralty.

This principle was accepted—­although the term “Navy Board” was not reinstituted—­the Admiralty Board being divided into two Committees, one for Operations and one for Materiel, the whole Board meeting at least once a week, as required, to discuss important questions affecting both sides.  Whilst it was necessary that the Maintenance Committee should be kept acquainted with the requirements in the shape of material needed for operations in which the Fleet was engaged—­and to the Deputy Chief of Naval Staff was assigned this particular liaison duty—­I was not in favour of discussing questions affecting ordinary operations with the whole Board, since, in addition to the delay thereby involved, members of the Maintenance Committee could not keep in sufficiently intimate touch with such matters, and opinions might be formed and conclusions expressed on an incomplete knowledge of facts.  Questions of broad policy or of proposed major operations were, of course, in a different category, and the above objections did not apply.