comes in the source of the confusion which at times
leads not a few--including some whose military training has been
exclusively in the leading of troops and in strategy and tactics--to
miss the point.

Under the modern military principle, which is the secret of rapidity and
efficiency in mobilization, duties are carefully defined and divided.
The General Staff does not administer, and is not trained in the
business of administration. This kind of military business is entrusted
to the administrative side of the army, the officers of which receive a
different kind of training. The General Staff says what is necessary.
The administrative side provides it as far as it can. And among the
exclusive functions of the administrative side of the War Office is the
recruiting of personnel by the Adjutant-General and the Military
Secretary. It is true that the Director of Military Training, who
supervises the training of the young officer when obtained, belongs to
the General Staff. That is because his work is educational. With
obtaining the young officer it is only accidentally that he is at all
concerned.

When, therefore, even distinguished commanders in the field express
regret at the want of foresight of the British nation in not having
prepared a much larger army before 1914, I would respectfully ask them
how they imagine it could have been done.

To raise a great corps of officers who have voluntarily selected the
career of an officer as an exclusive and absorbing profession has been
possible in Germany and in France. But it has only become possible there
after generations of effort and under pressure of a long-standing
tradition, extending from decade to decade, under which a nation, armed
for the defense of its land frontiers, has expended its money and its
spirit in creating such an officer caste.

Now, the British nation has put its money and its fighting spirit
primarily into its Navy and its oversea forces. Why? Because, just as
the Continental tradition had its genesis in the necessity for instant
readiness to defend land frontiers, so our tradition has had its genesis
in the vital necessity of always commanding the sea.

Possibly if, just after the war of 1870, we had endeavored to enter on a
new tradition, and to develop a great army, we might have succeeded in
doing so. With forty years' time devoted to the task and a very large
expenditure we might conceivably have succeeded. But I think that had we
done so