potential theatre of war. But experience proved that the general staff had been right.
When hostilities arise some instrument a good deal more effective than a consultative committee is needed to control conduct of the war, and, from Aug. 1914 to the date of the Armistice, the operations were, in the case of the United King- dom, for the first two and a half years of the struggle under supreme charge of various forms of war council directly repre- sentative of the Cabinet and given a free hand by that body. They were later under supreme charge of the specially estab- lished War Cabinet. The general staff was practically always represented at the meetings of the war councils and of the War Cabinet, but purely in an advisory position without voting power. They were responsible to the council or the Cabinet for the advice they gave, but the council or the Cabinet was responsible to the country for accepting or rejecting that advice. It is true that as a result of somewhat peculiar conditions that held good in the early days of the struggle, attributable partly to the unique personality of Lord Kitchener and partly to the weakening of the general staff at the War Office when its cream was skimmed off and dispatched to the Continent, the influence of the brain of the army was not for a time exerted very effectually in the councils of the Government. But that was only a passing phase. At a later stage the general staff was always at least allowed to ex- press its views, even if its opinion was not necessarily accepted.
As a matter of fact its opinion was occasionally ignored in questions of considerable importance. This was no doubt partly due to some want of confidence in its judgment felt in Govern- ment circles owing to the slow progress made towards victory, and partly due to the personality and the temperament of certain members of the Government itself. The general staff also must have been sometimes at fault on occasions when its advice was rejected, although, should the full facts ever be made known impartially, posterity will probably pronounce it usually to have been right. Still, a general staff, however well-organized it may be and however gifted and informed its personnel, is not in- fallible. That this is so was demonstrated in the protraction for years of the World War, whereas the British general staff had at the outset confidently reckoned on its only lasting some months. The German general staff, again, looked with contempt upon the huge forces that Lord Kitchener was known to be im- provising, until the value of the British "New Armies" was proved up to the hilt in the field; and at a later stage of the struggle it totally miscalculated and underestimated the mili- tary potentialities of the United States. Moreover, all the European general staffs alike, in their forecasts made in time of peace, underrated the wastage in personnel and the expend- iture in ammunition in a modern campaign on a great scale.
It has been said that a general staff must " think politically." If this maxim is merely to be taken as meaning that a general staff should appreciate political habits of thought, watch political tendencies, and keep itself acquainted with the political aspects of every question influencing military action alike in peace and in war, its truth is indisputable. But one of the most important duties falling to the lot of a general staff, especially in times of emergency, will often be to strive to prevent mere policy from adversely influencing the conduct of operations of war or affect- ing Government decisions in connexion with military subjects. History provides some striking examples of political considera- tions gravely prejudicing the prospects of armies in the field. MacMahon's fatal march to Sedan was a case in point. The retention of Gen. Penn Symons' advanced force at Glencoe in the opening days of the Natal campaign of 1899 furnishes another instance. Had the question at issue been regarded solely from the soldier's point of view, it is more than doubtful whether Gen. Townshend would ever have been launched on his ill-omened effort to reach Bagdad in Nov. 1915. When problems of this kind present themselves, a general staff will often have a difficult and delicate r61e to play. But the golden rule to govern its conduct on such occasions would seem to be that it ought to regard and present the problem from the fighting point of view alone. The politicians can look after the political side.
It cannot be too clearly understood that neither in the United Kingdom nor in any other military itate does the staff of an army in reality consist of a general staff alone. There must always be what, for lack of a more distinctive nomenclature, is called in the British service its " administrative " side although in point of fact many of the duties of a general staff are neces- sarily of an administrative character. It is indeed the case that, at least in peace-time, the administrative staff of an army is in a sense the more important of the two. The army has to be re- cruited and fed and clothed and equipped, and its discipline has to be maintained, otherwise there will be no troops for the general staff to dispose of and there will be no raison d'etre for the general staff. Whereas the general staff will often in peace-time be engaged on work which in the event may prove of little profit, the administrative staff is constantly busy disposing of questions which if not dealt with will cause a collapse. Calling the admin- istrative staff " adjutantur " may alter its status and may lower its dignity, but does not alter the fact that it is a staff and that it performs staff duties. The organization as affecting the adminis- trative staff that was introduced into the War Office in the United Kingdom in 1904, and in due course extended throughout the army (the details of which have been touched upon in earlier paragraphs), worked extremely well both at headquarters and with the troops during the pre-war period, and it also gave good results when subjected to trial at manoeuvres between 1909 and 1914. The same staff organization was extended to India shortly after it came into force in the United Kingdom. Nor, when it came to be put to the test in warfare on a gigantic scale in many parts of the world, was it found wanting. Although the problems engaging the attention of the quartermaster-general's staffs and the inspector-general of communications' staffs were in many respects fundamentally the same in the Gallipoli Peninsula, in Mesopotamia, and in France and Flanders, the wide differences in the geographical and topographical conditions as between the three theatres of war obliged the problems to be solved on sepa- rate lines in each case. In France and Flanders several railways connected the troops at the front with the secure and well- equipped ports that acted as bases. In the Gallipoli Peninsula open beaches under fire served for bases, and the communications were to all intents and purposes maritime. For most of the time in Mesopotamia it was a case of an army dependent on one single line of river communication, hundreds of miles long, although the river was gradually to some extent supplemented by specially constructed sections of railway. And yet the organization of the administrative staff as it had been designed in peace-time met requirements under these diverse sets of cir- cumstances. Where failures occurred, they were due to errors in execution or else to lack of essential resources. Such altera- tions as have recently been carried out as a result of the teach- ings of the World War have been in detail and not in principle.
The British plan subordinates the administrative staff to the general staff less than is the common practice. This is perhaps due to the nature of British campaigns of the 1874-1902 era, campaigns fought in regions often destitute of communications and always poor in resources. Almost everything hinged on supply and transport in these contests, and the transport gener- ally had to be improvised on entirely new methods for each particular case. Losses in action were as a rule trifling as com- pared to losses from disease. For one thought that the comman- der or his chief advisers gave to the enemy, ten thoughts were given to communications. Instead of looking to the front they were generally looking to the rear. Duties such as are now ap- portioned to the administrative staff greatly outweighed in im- portance duties such as are now apportioned to the general staff. There was little difficulty in beating the enemy if only supplies could be got up to permit a fight. But, to whatever cause it may be attributable, the fact remains that the chief of the general staff of a British army nowadays is merely in the position of primus inter pares relatively to the adjutant-general and the quartermaster-general and it is the same at the War Office. In almost all other armies, on the other hand, including that of the United States, the chief of the general staff is definitely chief
