effective cooperation in the event of war. Effective cooperation when an emergency ariss can only be ensured if the military staff has been in close touch with the corresponding naval staff in time of peace. Much attention had fortunately been paid to this question in the United Kingdom during the period that intervened between the creation of the British general staff and the outbreak of the World War. Permanent contact existed between the thinking branches of the Admiralty and of the War Office. Problems which might possibly arise in the future had been examined by them in conference, principles of action had been laid down, details had been worked out, and to this is to be attributed the secrecy and the smoothness with which the Brit- ish Expeditionary Force was transported across the Channel to France during the fortnight succeeding the declaration of war in 1914. Moreover, thanks to their being brought into contact at staff rides with naval officers and to the happy relations which existed between these two services, British general staff officers as a body had studied and were acquainted with naval doctrine and naval procedure, a great advantage when, as was the case at the Dardanelles, operations partook of an amphibious character. General staffs on the Continent did not, on the other hand, prove to be equally well-infornied as to maritime conditions; this was made apparent during discussions such as often took place between military authorities representing the different Allies, concerning the policy which ought to be pursued in the Near East and other problems in which sea-power was necessarily involved. It is only natural, however, that a military staff which is representative of a sea-faring people should devote more at- tention to such subjects than will that of a non-maritime nation or of a nation possessing small maritime interests and limited maritime resources.
When a country elects to make of its air service a department of State distinct from the army, as has happened in the United Kingdom, it necessarily falls to the lot of the military general staff to maintain those intimate relations with the aerial general staff by which alone mutual cooperation can be secured in time of war. Under such circumstances the military general staff stands towards the air service as it does to the navy.
" War," said Clausewitz, " is only a continuation of State policy by other means,!' and elsewhere that " none of the princi- pal plans which are required for a war can be made without an insight into the political relations." It was a recognition of this truth on the part of her Government that led to the triumphs of Prussia, first over Austria and then over France, in the days of von Moltke, the foremost professional interpreter of Clausewitz' doctrines. The executive in Berlin had during the middle de- cades of the igth century been working hand in hand with the general staff. Sadowa and Sedan were the outcome. The history of the short-lived German Empire indicates that in later years a tendency made itself felt for the general staff to attempt to direct, and even partially to succeed in directing, the policy of the Government. A system of genuine militarism in its worst form began to creep in, which in due course brought untold disasters on the German people; but the passages quoted above from the great Prussian military writer do not inculcate anything of that kind. What they do inculcate is that there should be at all times an intimate understanding between what has been called the " brain of the army " and the civilian executive at the head of the State. The truth is that any Government which under- stands its business will always, when any question of a delicate nature arises between it and the rulers of some foreign Power, keep itself fully acquainted with the resources at command for enforcing its wishes should a quarrel supervene. If, moreover, the most is to be made of such fighting force as a country will dispose of in the event of finding itself in a state of belligerency with some neighbour, it is indispensable that the military as also naval authorities shall have made beforehand a study of the strategical situation that will, as far as can be foreseen, arise when hostilities break out. It is also indispensable that those authorities shall have been made aware in advance of the likeli- hood of the struggle's taking place. It is on the central directing branch of the general staff, i.e. on the General Staff Department
at the War Office in the case of the United Kingdom, as it was on the " Great General Staff " of the days of von Moltke and the German Empire, that devolves the duty of maintaining relations with the Government and of advising it regarding the military aspect of problems created by the international situation. That central directing branch of the general staff is entitled to expect that the Government shall keep it fully au courant with the political conditions of the day.
The merits of the doctrine preached by Clausewitz seem to be self-evident, but leaders of opinion in the United Kingdom were slow to realize its importance. There existed an almost un- accountable inability to perceive the dangers to which a State unprepared for emergencies is exposed. When a Royal Com- mission presided over by Lord Hartington virtually recommended the setting up of a general staff in 1889, one of its members, a prominent politician who at a later date came to be Prime Min- ister, actually in one of the most fatuous documents ever written by a public man objected to the proposal on the grounds that, owing to its peculiar position, Great Britain had no need to study possibilities of conflict in advance. With such ineptitude in influential quarters, the bitter experiences of the S. African War were required to awaken British statesmen to a realization of their responsibilities. The lessons of that contest were to some extent learnt. By the setting up of the Committee of Imperial Defence, in which professional opinion was given a powerful voice, some preliminary steps had been taken in the right direction even before the creation of the general staff in 1904, and, subse- quent to that date, the general staff at the War Office has been constantly consulted by the British Government and has been kept well-informed on all points of importance connected with the international situation.
How, as a matter of administration, the relations between the general staff and the executive are to be governed, and by what process communications between them are to be carried out, necessarily depends upon the political system in vogue in the state concerned. In any country possessing representative institutions the general staff can only be acting in a consultative capacity, at all events in peace-time. In the United Kingdom in the years preceding the World War the Chief of the Imperial General Staff and the Director of Military Operations were ex- officio members of the Committee of Imperial Defence. When strategical or administrative questions in which military force was or might be concerned were to be discussed by the committee, documents setting out the general staff view on the subject were laid before it by the general staff representatives. The decision of the committee on the points under discussion was taken and recorded, and executive action sometimes followed if it was involved by the decision. But although the more prominent members of the Government were included in it, the committee itself was merely a consultative body, and no executive action involving expenditure could follow on one of its decisions without the obtaining of at least nominal Cabinet sanction. Such recom- mendations were liable to be vetoed on account of the expense by the committee without reference to the Cabinet. Moreover, it did not necessarily follow that the view of the general staff would be accepted by the committee even on academical questions.
An interesting example of the working of the system is pro- vided by the story of the Dardanelles. The expediency of an attack upon the Straits in the event of a war with Turkey was gone into by the committee as an academical question in 1906. The general staff were opposed to such a venture and the Admiralty repre- sentatives in the main agreed with them, the committee decided that the undertaking would in the event of a contest be inadvis- able, and the result was that study of the subject on the part of the general staff virtually ceased. When early in the World War the project was brought up afresh by the First Lord of the Admi- ralty, the decision which the Committee of Imperial Defence had arrived at eight years before was ignored, and when the opera- tions were undertaken their progress was hampered by lack of information, owing to the general staff's having acted on that decision and having to some extent abandoned research with regard to the topography, the resources and so forth of this
