Thus the actual administration of the Navy devolves upon the members of the board charged with the superintendence of the different branches of the service, while the full board meets frequently for the consideration of such questions as the First Lord wishes to refer to it.[93:2] There have been at times complaints about the working of the board, and the existing organisation is the result of gradual adaptations,[93:3] but at the present day the system appears to be highly satisfactory, and in fact it is constantly held up as a model to the less fortunate chiefs of the Army. [Sidenote: The War Office.] [Sidenote: Effect of the Crimean War.] The organisation of the War Office has undergone far more changes than that of the Admiralty, and has been the subject of a great deal more criticism both in and out of Parliament.[93:4] Like other countries with a popular form of government, England has found it hard to reconcile military command and civil control. In the War Office, as in the Admiralty, there has been a tendency to transfer supreme power gradually to the hands of the parliamentary chief; but owing to a number of causes--one of which was the tenacity with which the Queen clung to the idea of a peculiar personal connection between the Crown and the Army--the process of change in the War Office has been slow and halting. Up to the time of the Crimean War the Army was controlled by several different authorities, whose relations to one another were not very clearly defined, and who were subordinate to no single administrative head. This naturally produced friction and lack of efficiency, which was forcibly brought to public attention by the sufferings of the troops during the war. The result was the creation of a distinct Secretary of State for War, and the concentration in his hands of most of the business relating to the Army; but the change was made without a thorough reorganisation of the War Office, and without defining the relative authority of the Secretary of State and the Commander-in-Chief.[94:1] This last office was held at that time by the Queen's cousin, the Duke of Cambridge; and the fact that he was a royal duke, coupled with the Queen's feelings about the Army, threw an obstacle in the way of bringing the office fully under the control of the Secretary. In 1870, however, the Queen was prevailed upon to issue an Order in Council providing that the Commander-in-Chief should be completely subordinate to the Secretary of State.[95:1] Unfortunately, this order by no means settled either the organisation of the War Office, or the relation between the Secretary and the Commander-in-Chief. [Sidenote: Lord Hartington's Commission.]