should join the Triple Alliance in an attack.

But an investigation of a searching character presently revealed great
deficiencies in the British military organization of these days. We had
never contemplated the preparation of armies for warfare of the
Continental type. The older generals had not been trained for this
problem. We had, it was true, excellent troops in India and elsewhere.
These were required as outposts for Imperial defense. As they had to
serve for long periods and to be thoroughly disciplined, they had to be
professional soldiers, engaged to serve in most cases for seven years
with the colors and afterwards for five in the reserve. They were highly
trained men, and there was a good reserve of them at home. But that
reserve was not organized in the great self-contained divisions which
would be required for fighting against armies organized for rapid action
on modern Continental principles. Its formations in peace time were not
those which would be required in such a war. There was in addition a
serious defect in the artillery organization which would have prevented
more than a comparatively small number of batteries (about forty-two
only in point of fact) from being quickly placed on a war footing. The
transport and supply and the medical services were as deficient as the
artillery.

In short, the close investigation made at that time disclosed that it
was not possible, under the then existing circumstances, to put in the
field more than about 80,000 men, and even these only after an interval
of over two months, which would be required for conversion of our
isolated units into the new war formations of an army fit to take the
field against the German first line of active corps. The French
naturally thought that a machine so slow moving would be of little use
to them. They might have been destroyed before it could begin to operate
effectively. Both they and the Germans had organized on the basis that
modern Continental warfare had become a high science. Hitherto we had
not, and it was only our younger generals who had even studied this
science.

There was, therefore, nothing for it but to attempt a complete
revolution in the organization of the British Army at home. The nascent
General Staff was finally organized in September, 1906, and its
organization was shortly afterwards developed so as to extend to the
entire Empire, as soon as a conference had taken place with the
Ministers of the Dominions e