The two great changes made at this time were the modification in the powers of the Commander-in-Chief, and the creation of consultative boards in the War Office. Neither of them can be said to have attained the object aimed at. The attempt to create advisory councils of that kind has been tried more than once, but after working usefully for a time they have ceased to meet regularly and have fallen into disuse. This appears to have been the case with the War Office Council and Army Board created in 1895 and reorganized in 1899 and 1900.[97:1] The position of Commander-in-Chief under the Order in Council of 1895 has been the subject of severe criticism. At the expiration of his term of five years, Lord Wolseley recorded in a memorandum his opinion that the attempt to give the Commander-in-Chief a supervision over the departments of the War Office, and yet make their heads responsible to the Secretary of State, involved a contradiction, and had resulted in depriving the Commander-in-Chief of all effective control, and in making his office a high-sounding title with no real responsibility. He insisted that no army could be efficient unless the command, discipline and training of the troops were in the hands of one man, and that man a soldier; and he urged that the Commander-in-Chief should either be made the real head of the forces, or that the office should be abolished, and the Secretary of State for War should be himself a military man.[98:1] The only direct result that the memorandum had on the organisation of the War Office was the reëstablishmemt of the control of the Commander-in-Chief over the department of the Adjutant General by an Order in Council on Nov. 4, 1901.[98:2] But a statement by Lord Wolseley of his views, in a speech in the House of Lords in March, 1901, led to an unseemly altercation with Lord Lansdowne, the late Secretary of State for War, in which each sought to cast upon the other the blame for the lack of preparation for the war in South Africa.[98:3] The occurrence would appear to show that the relations between the military and civil authorities at the War Office are not yet upon a well-recognised or satisfactory basis; and it shows also that this relation is very different from that which ordinarily prevails between ministers and their expert officials. For reasons that will be explained in a later chapter, such a dispute in any other department would be well-nigh inconceivable. From a political point of view the Army and Navy officers are, in fact, in an exceptional situation. They are not subject to the general rule which excludes from the House of Commons all office-holders who are not ministers.[98:4] And just as military officers are allowed to play a part in politics forbidden to other public servants, so those among them who hold high administrative posts stand in a position peculiar to themselves, a position which in the case of the Admiralty is