I sometimes read speeches, made even by officers who have served with distinction at the head of their men in the field, which express regret that the British nation was so shortsighted as not to have provided such an army before the war.  They point to the effort it made later on with such success during the war.  But to raise armies under the stress of war, when the people submit cheerfully to compulsion, and when highly intelligent civilian men of business readily quit their occupations to be trained as rapidly as possible for the work of every kind of officer, is one thing.  To do it in peace time is quite another.  I doubt whether more was possible in this direction than, in the days prior to the war, to organize the Officers’ Training Corps, which contained over twenty thousand partially prepared young men, and began at once to expand to yet larger dimensions from the day when war broke out.  For the corps of matured officers, required to train recruits and to command them in war when organized in their units, would have had to consist of soldiers, themselves highly trained in military organization, who had devoted their lives to this work as a profession.  It takes many years in peace time to train such officers.  Because they must be professional, they can only be recruited under a voluntary system.

Now, before the war it was difficult enough to recruit even so many as the number we then had got, a number totally inadequate for any army larger than the small one we actually put into shape at home.  Every source had been tried in my time by the able administrative generals who were working under me at the War Office.  I say “administrative generals,” for here 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.