s--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.

The further alterations in Naval Staff organization were not adopted
without considerable discussion and some differe