moment,
seeing that it had not yet been decided whether mobilization was to be
ordained or not. But I found Wilson in much more buoyant mood after
the week-end of anxiety, for he believed that Mr. Bonar Law's letter
had proved the decisive factor. By this time we moreover knew that
Germany had already violated the neutrality of Luxemburg and was
threatening Belgium openly.

I ought to mention here that this appointment to the post of Director
of Military Operations came as a complete surprise--my not having been
warned well in advance had been due to an oversight; up to within a
few months earlier, when I had ceased to belong to the Reserve of
Officers, having passed the age-limit for colonels, my fate in the
event of general mobilization was to have been something high up on
the staff of the Home Defence Army. One could entertain no illusions.
Heavy responsibilities were involved in taking up such an appointment
on the eve of war. After five years of civil life it was a large order
to find myself suddenly thrust into such a job and to be called upon
to take up charge of a War Office Directorate which I knew was
overloaded. Ever since 1904, ever since the date when this Directorate
had been set up by the Esher Committee as one item in the
reconstitution of the office as a whole and when my section of the old
Intelligence Division had been absorbed into it, I had insisted that
this composite branch was an overburdened and improperly constituted
one.

For the Esher triumvirate had amalgamated "operations" and
"intelligence," while they had deposited "home defence" in the
Military Training Directorate. It was an absurd arrangement in
peace-time, and one that was wholly unadapted to the conditions of a
great war. Lord Esher and his colleagues would seem, however, to have
been actuated by a fear lest the importance of home defence should
overshadow that of preparation for oversea warfare if the two sets of
duties were in one hand, and, inasmuch as they were making a start
with the General Staff at Headquarters and bearing in mind former
tendencies, they may have been right. They, moreover, hardly realized
perhaps that intelligence must always be the handmaid of operations,
and that it is in the interest of both that they should be kept quite
distinct. It was natural that the first Chief of the General Staff to
be appointed, Sir N. Lyttelton, should have hesitated to overset an
organization which had been so recently laid