ALLIED MARITIME TRANSPORT COUNCIL. This Council (which will be referred to below as the A.M.T.C.) was the organ through which, in the latter months of the World War, the Allied Powers decided how the merchant shipping at their disposal should be allotted among their different supply services. Throughout 1918 shipping was, in each of the Allied countries, the limiting factor in the whole of the civilian effort by which the military struggle was supported and conditioned. The authorities responsible for securing the food of their re spective populations and for meeting the needs of the armies in munitions and other supplies found at this period that the pri mary factor in all their calculations was the amount of shipping space which they could obtain for their imported supplies or raw materials. Thus in 1918 the policy governing, in main principle, the allocation of merchant shipping determined in a very large measure the character and direction of the whole effort of the several Allied countries. It involved decisions of such intricate, far-reaching and decisive consequence that they could not be properly taken by a pure shipping authority nor indeed by any body of ministers except with the aid of a system which could give them at once access to the advice of the many authorities concerned and the means to judge between their competing claims.
We thus find that the A.M.T.C., the body of Allied ministers by whom the ultimate decisions were to be taken, was a part only, but the pivotal part, of a vast system partly national and partly international, through which the competing demands were sifted and adjusted and reduced to questions of principle, few in number but far-reaching in effect, for decision by the Council it self. This system was the counterpart in the civilian sphere of the unity of military command which was achieved at about the same time, and it was among the decisive factors in the issue of the struggle. It was different, not only in its enormous range, but in the principles of its organization, from anything previously known in administration; and it has had a profound effect on the methods and machinery by which world problems have been handled since the war. For all these reasons it deserves more at tention than it has yet received both from the historian and the student of political and economic science.
The different parts of the system which were linked together by the A.M.T.C. had a separate existence, fulfilling in most cases some functions unconnected with shipping; and they are described in various other articles (see list at end of article). But as the A.M.T.C. was the pivotal part, it is here that we may con veniently give a brief sketch of the whole structure. Without such a general view no account of the A.M.T.C. would be intelli gible, for it was essentially an instrument for linking together, for a special purpose, other authorities whose range of action extended beyond its own sphere, and except with them and through them it had no separate existence or means of action. The A.M.T.C. linked together a number of international (Allied) authorities dealing with the control of different commodities; and each of these was formed by linking together the national authorities dealing with the same commodities in the different Allied coun tries. The whole system was built up on the basis of national de partmental control and administration, which it united and in no way replaced. We must therefore sketch, in the briefest practic able outline, the way in which the State control system grew up, first nationally and then internationally ; and for this purpose we can properly write mainly from the point of view of Great Britain, which was the principal centre of the whole Allied supply organization.
But for the conditions of war needs and shortage this system, independent of deliberate direction and control, proved blind and wasteful. It produced too little, it produced the wrong things, and it distributed them to the wrong people.
The State in war can order in large quantities ; it can there fore dispense with many middlemen. And in war the necessities of all must have priority over the luxuries of a few. Under conditions of national shortage the criterion of effective economic demand does not secure this ; with only bread enough to go round it will cause alternate surfeit and starvation. For these reasons, from the early days of the war, we find State control extending over spheres previously occupied by unfettered private enter prise. The new system was not introduced full-fledged on any general principles. On the contrary it was applied piecemeal, and often with obvious reluctance, under the compelling force of a breakdown or obvious defect of the peace system. Usually the earliest motive was to save the Treasury the expense of in flated competitive prices for war materials; then came the desire to mitigate the public indignation at similar prices for their own purchases; and lastly there was the necessity of distributing equitably what had become a bare sufficiency of the necessities of life.
It was the necessity of organizing a priority between different services and requirements needing the same raw materials of which the full supplies available were insufficient that, to a large extent, compelled the grouping within a few great ministries which has just been described. The same necessity was constantly improving the mechanism of consultation and authority within each of these great departments which determined the propor tions of the available resources to be allotted to different services and different industries. This was sufficient until a serious shortage began to be felt in the three great requirements common to them all—men, finance for the purchase of foreign supplies, and ship ping to import them. This needed new machinery to decide not only within each of the ministries but between them. The system devised to allot men and to ration finance need not be described here. The central requirement, which at the most difficult period was the most serious of all, was shipping ; it was upon this need that the international system under the A.M.T.C. was ultimately based.
Before describing this international development it is therefore necessary to add a note on the British control of shipping; for it was this control which the submarine made the centre of the whole system. So long as the shipping authorities were able to do their proper and normal work, that of providing the tonnage the supply services wanted, they were the servants of the supply departments. Just in proportion as submarine losses and increased requirements made it impossible for the shipping authorities to supply all the ships they were asked for, they necessarily tended to become the masters. For the allotment of the ships rested with them and that allotment set the limit to the programme of the supply department. This position only developed gradually. The British shipping department at first requisitioned only the ships needed for army and navy supplies and transport, leaving the rest for free or only partially controlled chartering. But the area ex tended as the stringency increased, and as a natural counterpart to the increasing control of supplies and materials by the other departments. With this extension the responsibility attaching to the allocation made by the shipping department constantly in creased, till it became obviously too great to be exercised except in effective collaboration with the supply departments concerned. The successive methods by which this collaboration was attempted are described in another article (WAR CONTROL OF SHIPPING). Only the later developments can be noted here.
To understand the significance of the system which gradually grew up to meet this need it is necessary to recall the normal method by which arrangements were made between countries before the war broke out. If the French Ministry of Commerce needed to arrange something with the British Board of Trade, e.g., about shipping, it transmitted its request through the British embassy in Paris, or the French embassy in London, to the British Foreign Office, who in turn sent it on to the Board of Trade. The reply would come by the same channel, so that the communication between two specialized departments would have passed four times through the hands and pens of non specialists—or, to be exact, of those who were specialized not in shipping but in the foreign relations of the two countries. This system was based on the principle that in such discussions the primary fact was not that shipping was the subject, but that two countries were negotiating. A shipping concession on the one hand might be set off against a concession of quite another kind, perhaps political. This could only be done by those dealing with the general foreign policy of their countries.
This procedure was obviously unsuitable in war. The intricacy of the arrangements necessitated direct contact between special ized ministers and officials; the common interests of the Allies outweighed their divergencies. Gradually a system was developed of which it was the fundamental principle that a French official wanting British ships was primarily a person wanting ships from someone who could supply them and not primarily a Frenchman negotiating with an Englishman.
Shipping assistance from Great Britain to the Allies was in the first years rather improvised than organized. Appeals for help were dealt with as far as possible on their merits by the British shipping authority, a method not unjustified at first when ship ping was among the least of the Allied problems. But it was obviously inadequate when the shipping situation became so serious that the allocation of tonnage was of the most vital im portance to the whole of the supply arrangements. A British authority was ill-equipped to measure British against French or Italian needs.
A new impulse to developing organization on an Allied basis was given when the United States entered the war in 1917 by the formation of a council to advise as to the allocation of American Credits (see INTER-ALLY COUNCIL OF WAR PURCHASES). Had finance been more limited than ships the council might have proved the centre of the whole system ; but as transport could be f ound only for the most vital supplies, and it was certain that for these finance would be forthcoming, the real struggle was to squeeze supply demands within the limits of the available ship ping, not within those of the available finance. This meant that the shipping organization was the centre of the system; and that it was under the pressure of shipping shortage that the highly developed national and the more partially developed Allied organs were linked into one comprehensive international system. The final impetus to this development was given by the transport crisis of g 7.
The strain on the shipping authorities, while there was still no comprehensive inter-Allied organization fitted to determine priority between the different supplies, was in these conditions an intolerable one. At any moment the allocation Of a batch of ships to food might mean a shortage of vital munitions, an allocation to munitions might entail starvation.
But by this time the national organization in the several coun tries, which was the indispensable condition of the inter-Allied system, waS at its full development, and in wheat and munitions partial international arrangements were already working. In Great Britain the Ministry of Shipping had full and effective control over every voyage and every cargo, and the whole system of supply was centralized under the Milner Committee. A stand ing committee under M. Clementel, Minister of Commerce, played a similar role in France. Italy's problem resolved itself practically into coal and cereals, and she had both of these as well as her shipping under complete control. Except, however, for consulta tion between munitions experts and the more fully developed Allied action of the Wheat Executive, these national supply sys tems were working with little knowledge of each other's needs. As regards most commodities there was still no means of judging fairly whether the standards of sacrifice and restriction were approximately equal or not.
The Allied Maritime Transport Council Established.— Those who realized the desperate position of shipping were con vinced that it was now essential to develop and complete the sys tem by extending Allied committees like the Wheat Executive over the whole range of supplies, and linking them up by depend.
ence for their transport upon a supreme Allied Shipping Council. On their proposal the necessary decisions were taken at the impor tant Allied Conference which met in Paris in Nov. and Dec. 1917; and the A.M.T.C., consisting of two ministers of the three prin cipal European Allies and two delegates from the United States of America was constituted and furnished with an executive organization.
What was the nature of this new council and of the Allied sup ply organization which now developed rapidly round it? It was not a supreme authority acting with a delegated power enabling it to override the governments which created it. No body of men could have been entrusted with such power, and those who at this time proposed either the appointment of a council with supreme executive power or a single economic dictator, were misled by the military analogy or ignorant of the realities of the supply situ ation. A single decision of such an authority, a reduction in sugar or in wheat imports for example, would affect every civilian house hold in the countries concerned. No cabinet could divest itself of responsibility for such decisions. The Paris Conference rightly, therefore, at the end of 1917, rejected the proposal of an "Inter national Board with complete executive power over a common pool of tonnage." Its Constitution.—Onthe other hand, if the A.M.T.C. was not in principle executive, it was in practice much more than ad visory. If the first was impracticable, the second would have been useless. How could the need for urgent and desperate decisions be met by a body which, when it had itself decided, could only make recommendati ins to four governments and wait for their assent ? The solution of this particular dilemma was found in ap pointing as members of the council the ministers who in their own countries had the right to decide, and in forming the executive organization of the officials who in their own countries actually directed, or could effectively influence, the execution. This prin ciple practically destroyed distinction between the executive and the advisory. In principle the council was advisory. But, if the British Shipping Controller agreed as a member of it to a decision involving orders to British shipping, he gave effect to it as a minister in his own department ; and the same thing followed if the French Minister of Commerce agreed as a member to a decision involving a change in French supplies.
Had this principle been confined to the ministerial councils it would have represented some advance, but a quite insufficient one. Departmental conferences of ministers had often taken place before. To develop these into councils with a regular con stitution and periodical meetings would have been useful, but not decisive. Ministers meet for a day or two and return. On mat ters of such intricate and detailed daily administration as are involved by arranging supplies in war, no such occasional meet ings can resolve the difficulties of diverging national interest. The novelty of the new system consisted in the extension of this new principle, so far as was materially possible, to a series of committees of officials covering the whole range of shipping and supplies and responsible to the A.M.T.C. and two similarly formed Munitions and Food Councils.
Immediately under the A.M.T.C. was the first of these bodies, the Allied Maritime Transport Executive, of which, on the prin ciple described above, the British member, who was the chairman, was the Director of Ship Requisitioning in the Ministry of Ship ping, the French member, the influential chef du cabinet of the French Minister of Commerce, the Italian, an official of great influence in the Italian supply departments, while the American was one of the American members of the council. The head quarters were in London, and the staff was grouped in four national divisions under the direction respectively of the four members of the executive. The Council of ministers itself met only three times before the end of the war. But the Executive of offi cials met frequently, and in the long intervals between the coun cil meetings was the instrument through which Allied co-ordina tion in the direction of shipping was secured.
Ultimately the whole range of imported commodities was cov ered by the following committees:— Under the (Allied) Food Council: 1. Cereals (the wheat 4. Meats and fats. executive).
2. Oils and Seeds.
3. Sugar.
Under the (Allied) Munitions Council: 5. Nitrates. 9. Non-Ferrous Metals.
6. Aircraft. 1o. Mechanical Transport.
7. Chemicals. 11. Steel.
8. Explosives.
And (without being grouped under a similar ministerial council,` 12. Wool. 17. Paper and Pulp.
13. Cotton. 18. Timber.
14. Flax, Hemp and Jute. 19. Petroleum.
15. Hides and Leather. 20. Coal and Coke.
16. Tobacco.
It had been intended to group these last nine committees under a Raw Materials Council, but this council had not been formed when the Armistice made further organization of this kind unnecessary.
These committees secured combined Allied plans on all ques tions within their respective spheres on which combined action was necessary. It was only so far as their programmes needed shipping that they needed the approval of the A.M.T.C. But as the allocation of shipping was the crucial factor in all the main supply arrangements, the A.M.T.C. and its executive acquired the dominant position.
Meantime, the Wheat Executive is negotiating with the Trans port Executive as to the new programme for 1917-18. The latter, conscious of the competing claims for munitions, etc. is urging reduction. The Wheat Executive makes efforts at reduc tion and tries to distribute this reduction among the three coun tries. The margin of difference between the two executives is diminished, but not removed. An attempt is made by negoti ations with the other food committees, and under the general authority of the Food Council, to balance the respective claims of cereals and other foodstuffs. The final food programme put forward by the Food Council is still in excess of what is likely to be obtained, but the difference is reduced to manageable dimen sions. And the final issue is presented to the A.M.T.C., when it is practically simplified, to a decision between the competing claims of Allied food as a whole and Allied munitions.
The concluding stages of this process are best illustrated by the decisions taken at the A.M.T.C. meeting in Sept. 1918. The council, at that meeting, reviewed the whole of the prospective shipping position for 1918-19. They had before them estimates carrying the authority of the shipping experts of all the countries concerned to the effect that, after allowing for ships allotted to military expeditions and the fleets, the total imports could not exceed: (for coal for Great Britain 72,500,000 ) raw materials France tons ) food Italy munitions They decided, on the advice of the Transport Executive, that 25,200,000 tons must be allowed for coal, and 7,500,000 tons for raw materials, leaving 39,800,000 tons for food and munitions; against demands of 49,000,000 (2 7,000,00o for food and 2 2,000, 00o for munitions) . Finally, after difficult negotiations, they allowed 22,000,000 for food and 17,800,00o for munitions. The conclusion of the Armistice a few weeks later robbed these de cisions of the practical importance they would otherwise have possessed. But they illustrate the way in which the whole Allied system was by the end of the war linked together and dominated by the supreme shipping authority.
The system was, however, not fully and equally working when brought to an end by the Armistice. It was tested and working fully for food and beginning to work for munitions; but was still in its preparatory stages for miscellaneous raw materials for civilian use.
The fundamental principle is the direct contact of special ized ministers and of'icials of different countries effected through a regular organization whose members are grouped according to special experience and authority, not according to nationality. The national administrations now touched each other, not at one point (the Foreign Offices), but at scores (the officials en gaged in the different controls) and the contact was no longer occasional but continuous. Any divergence of national interest was settled within its own sphere, and independently of differences elsewhere. Agreement once reached within each specialist com mittee, the further issue was not between nation and nation but between supply and supply. The Allied munitions demands were pressed as a whole with the support of the representatives of all countries against the claims of Allied food demands supported by all theirs. Thus was co-operation between the Allies at last shifted from a diplomatic to an administrative basis.
Influence of War System on Later International Organi zation.—Themachinery so erected, and the principles of admin istration so developed, have left a deep impress upon subsequent organization. In the Armistice period, after some delay due to the desire of the American Government to terminate all war organi zations at once, a Supreme Economic Council based on the principles described above and with a personnel very largely the same carried on the Armistice tasks of removing the block ade, bringing the German ships into use, re-allotting ships for the repatriation of troops and prisoners, for the import of raw ma terials required for reconstructions, arranging relief for the starv ing countries of Europe, and re-establishing railway transport and communications.
More important and more permanent is the influence of the same experience upon the administrative organization of the League of Nations. In spite of the obvious differences of the tasks, the student of political science will find many resemblances to the A.M.T. organization in the composition and method of working of the technical committees for finance, economics, transit, mandates, etc.—by which the Assembly and Council of .the League are advised. The members of such committees regard themselves primarily as specialists in their particular subject matter. At the same time, as they are in fact of differing na tionality and know the tendencies of opinion and interest in their different countries, they afford just the kind of bridge between na tional opposing views which was provided by the programme committees. It was perhaps useful that all three of the European members of the A.M.T. executive joined the secretariat of the League and had a part in building up the new machinery. But essentially that machinery was constructed as it was because it is among the fundamental principles of the League itself, first that the common interests of nations are no less important than their differences, and secondly that these common differences must be resolved by agreement and not by the overriding decision of a superior authority.
With some difference of emphasis, these were the principles which determined the Allied system; with some difference of application, the international system follows the same principles. With this system the real instrument of the League's action is not merely its permanent staff but the national organizations, public and private, which are linked together through its specialist committees and commissions. Its real executive is located not in one city but in sections, in all the main capitals of the world. Its central staff is the "coupling" which unites this intricate mechanism and enables it to achieve an international task. Geneva is not a centre of controlling power but an instrument to co-ordi nate activity which is world-wide in its influence and means of action. It is an instrument, not for governing the world, but f or assisting the world to govern itself in agreement and in co-opera tion. It permeates and transforms the policy of the world as the Allied organization permeated and transformed, without an over riding authority, the policy of the Allies. (See also SHIPPING,