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 early in the following year.  The outcome was a complete recasting, which, after three years’ work, made it practicable rapidly to mobilize, not only 100,000, but 160,000 men; to transport them, with the aid of the Navy, to a place of concentration which had been settled between the staffs of France and Britain; and to have them at their appointed place within twelve days, an interval based on what the German Army required on its side for a corresponding concentration.

All the arrangements for this were worked out by the end of 1910.  Both Sir John French and Sir Douglas Haig took an active part in the work.  Behind the first-line army so organized, a second-line army of larger size, tho far less trained, and so designed that it could be expanded, was organized.  This was the citizen or “Territorial” army, consisting in time of peace of fourteen divisions of infantry and artillery and fourteen brigades of cavalry, with the appropriate medical, sanitary, transport and other auxiliary services.  Those serving in this second-line army were civilians, and, of course, much less disciplined than the officers and men of the first line.  Its primary function was home defense, but its members were encouraged to undertake for service abroad, if necessary; and a large part of this army, in point of fact, fought in France, Flanders and in the East soon after the beginning of the war, in great measure making up by intelligence for shortness of training.