‘Our Frankenstein’? Spenser Wilkinson,Strategic Planning and the Creation of the British General Staff

I

Prussian success in the wars of German unification showed the importance of an expert thinking department for directing a modern national war. European armies recognised the utility of adopting general staffs for fighting the next big war on the Continent. In contrast, Victorian Britain lacked a comparable department for the study of possible wars and the planning of national strategy. The leading thinker about war in Britain, Spenser Wilkinson, advocated for the professionalisation of strategic planning and the creation of a British general staff system. Wilkinson observed that ‘No one knows what the British army is for’ and the ‘army is governed without knowledge’. Wilkinson argued that the formation of a general staff was fundamental to the making of British strategy. ¹

Wilkinson was the leading voice in a small group of progressive civilians, soldiers and sailors advocating for national defence reforms and pressuring the Government to provide Britain with ‘an efficient instrument of war’. ² The group of senior Army officers, Lord Wolseley, Lord Roberts and General Sir Henry Brackenbury, and high-profile naval reformers, Admiral Sir Geoffrey Hornby and Admiral Lord Charles Beresford, called for the formation of a general staff system. The reformists argued Britain needed professional strategic planning and more expert advice for the Government. ³

Three main obstructions to a general staff existed. The first obstacle was the connection between the Royal Family and the military. The Duke of Cambridge, the Commander-in-Chief of the British Army, opposed a general staff. The second barrier was a British culture of parochialism which generally did not believe in expert advice. Continental methods and bureaucracy were disliked and considered ‘quite un-English’. While newspapers discussed imitation of the German General Staff, very few people understood the key aspects of the Prussian system. ⁴

The greatest impediment was British politics. Politicians largely regarded a general staff with ‘supreme indifference’. Some statesmen believed the German arrangement for Britain would be ‘monstrous’. ⁵ Indeed, Lord Esher called the General Staff ‘our Frankenstein’. ⁶ Prime Ministers like Lord Salisbury and Lord Rosebery were content using the Military Intelligence Department as a kind of rudimentary general staff. As William Beaver showed, Salisbury and Rosebery conducted rather successful foreign policies with strategic advice from the effective Intelligence Department. ⁷ Cabinet Ministers were anxious about losing strategic control over British defence policy. Secretaries of State for War were concerned about the influence of a general staff on the War Office. Lord Lansdowne warned that the civilian Minster would be ‘the administrative puppet of the great soldier’ at the head of the Army’. Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman feared a ‘new Chief of the Staff will be virtually a new Pope’. Both Liberals and Conservatives were against creating a British general staff. ⁸

Historians broadly agreed on how these challenges were resolved. Firstly, when Cambridge retired in 1895, a member of the Royal Family did not become Commander-in-Chief. Secondly, the conduct of the South African War showed the need for professional strategic planning. And thirdly, Lord Haldane's political influence was important in getting Parliament to support Army reform. Moreover, most scholars argued the General Staff played a role in shaping British strategy. ⁹ However, exactly how the General Staff was created, evolved and worked, was much debated.

Haldane claimed absurdly in his memoir Before the War (1920) that he created the General Staff almost single-handedly in 1906 and made ‘a complete revolution in the organisation of the British Army’ for the strategy of the Continental commitment to help the French armies resist a German invasion in northern France. ¹⁰ The first group of scholars accepted Haldane's ‘complete revolution’ explanation for the development of the General Staff and Army strategic planning. J. K. Dunlop, N. d’Ombrain and J. McDermott argued British strategic planning changed abruptly in around 1906 as the General Staff adopted ‘the Haldane conception’ of a Continental strategy for war with Germany in Europe. ¹¹

However, the concept for the creation of the General Staff was not credited only to Haldane, but also to Esher and his group, who planned out a general staff in the Report of the War Office (Reconstitution) Committee (1904). ¹² Scholars relied too much on the publication of Esher's letters which promoted this interpretation. For example, Esher arranged for Lieutenant-Colonel Gerald F. Ellison to be appointed Haldane's private secretary and noted smugly in his journal that ‘nothing could indicate more clearly the “nobbling” of Haldane by our Committee!’ ¹³ Dunlop argued the ‘entries in the Esher Journals’ showed the scheme for the creation of the General Staff was ‘the work of two men, Esher and Ellison’. ¹⁴ For d’Ombrain, Esher ‘was responsible’ for helping Haldane establish the ‘existence’ of the General Staff. ¹⁵ Whereas, McDermott emphasised the ‘influence of [Sir George] Clarke and Esher at work’ in the organisation of the Staff system. ¹⁶ In his biography of Esher, Peter Fraser overstated these claims. Fraser contended, the General Staff ‘owed little to Haldane’ and ‘the final outcome bore a striking resemblance to the scheme which Esher himself championed’. ¹⁷

A second group of historians challenged Haldane's interpretation of a ‘revolution’ in British strategic planning. Samuel R. Williamson and John Gooch showed the Army's plans for British strategy in a European war were ‘extensive’ and ‘apparent’ before the General Staff intensified the study of Continental intervention in 1906. ¹⁸ In the creation of the General Staff, Gooch maintained that Haldane was ‘informed’ by the ideas of Esher and Clarke through the ‘tuition’ provided by Ellison. ¹⁹ Gooch formed a consensus about the creation of the General Staff and strategic planning for war in Europe.

Recent studies reconsidered the formation of the General Staff. Edward Spiers stated that the claim Haldane ‘calculated’ its creation to revolutionise British strategy was an ‘utter fabrication’. ²⁰ As Spiers argued, ‘creating a General Staff did not offer Haldane much scope for original thought and innovation’. While previous scholars overlooked Wilkinson's influence, Spiers alluded to the important work of ‘outsiders like Wilkinson’, who ‘suggested the introduction of a General Staff in Britain, based on the German model, as early as 1890’. ²¹

Certainly, as Hew Strachan wrote, the British General Staff was a ‘new creation’. It was not the German General Staff of popular conception but a noticeably British institution. Moreover, Strachan asserted, ‘at the heart’ of the adoption of Continentalism in the Army between 1901 and 1905 was Roberts's conversion to ‘preparedness against Germany’ through his ‘friendship with Wilkinson’. Importantly, as Strachan suggested, the British view of a general staff was linked to the promotion of the idea by Wilkinson. But as Wilkinson showed, ‘the German practice cannot at any point be quoted in support’ of any public or Government schemes for a general staff. Strachan, like Wilkinson, argued the ‘British supporters of a General Staff often misunderstood the model’ for their designs. They believed the German General Staff authored and taught doctrine and had a ‘more cerebral’ approach to the study of war, when really it focused on teaching ‘concreate examples’ and studying ‘practicalities more than theories’. ²²

This article examines how Wilkinson transmitted the essence of the German General Staff into English. In the opinion of Sir Basil Liddell Hart, Wilkinson ‘helped pave the way for the creation of a General Staff, by showing both the meaning of and the need for it’. ²³ The American Secretary of War, Elihu Root, 1899–1904, who established the United States Army General Staff, told Wilkinson that winning the First World War ‘would have been impossible … but for the existence of the General Staffs’. Root recognised, ‘what a great part your little book “The Brain of an Army” played’ in the creation of the General Staffs in Britain and the United States. ²⁴

This article argues that Haldane remodelled the British General Staff with ideas from Wilkinson. Paraphrasing Spiers, Wilkinson did not leave much ‘scope for original thought and innovation’ about creating the General Staff. Yet, historians mistakenly credited Esher and Ellison with Haldane's concept. Scholars assumed the framework instigated in the Report of the War Office (Reconstitution) Committee in 1904 anticipated Haldane's recasting of the General Staff in 1907. However, as Haldane reassured Wilkinson, the Esher Committee Report was ‘far from being like a Holy Writ’. Moreover, as Wilkinson challenged the Esher Committee, Esher realised Haldane was less open to the principles set out in their 1904 Report. ²⁵

This article shows that two plans for the British General Staff competed between 1904 and 1907. The first, outlined by Esher, Clarke and Ellison, implemented the recommendations of the Hartington Commission Report from 1890. It abolished the position of Commander-in-Chief and established an Army Council, limited the powers of the Chief of the General Staff, and made the Army General Staff less than an Intelligence Branch of the War Office, only responsible for studying ‘theories’ of war. The second, advocated by Wilkinson and General Sir William Nicholson, rejected the ideas of both the Hartington Commission and the Esher Committee. They proposed that the new Chief of the General Staff should have the same powers as the previous Commander-in-Chief, with a reduced role in managing the Army. ²⁶ Their plan called for the creation of a ‘strategic brain’ in the form of a general staff that would focus solely on the ‘practicalities’ of war and strategic planning.

In 1907 Haldane adopted most of the principles promoted by Wilkinson. Presenting the Army reforms to Parliament, Haldane praised the ‘enormous advantage of the General Staff’ and acknowledged subtly the impact of Wilkinson's work:

Without the General Staff it is impossible to work out and to solve these problems. We used to operate in a slap-dash way in the old days, and the result was confusion. The General Staff is the brain of the Army, which thinks out these problems. ²⁷

As Gooch argued, unlike the shell Staff created by Esher in 1904, the new General Staff was a ‘smooth functioning machine’ that ‘devilled away’ on strategic planning and the practicalities of fighting a European war. ²⁸ It provided the War Office with strategic direction before the First World War.

II

General Staffs were a relatively new and largely unknown innovation in Britain. Prussian success against France in 1870–71 popularised the German General Staff. The first general staffs originated in pre-Napoleonic France. Napoleon also created an effective, if personalised system, which was like a general staff. ²⁹ The Prussian Army created the German General Staff system during and after the Napoleonic Wars. Whilst the Ministry of War, maintained and administered the Army, the Chief of the General Staff answered directly to the King and was solely responsible for preparing plans of action during peace and directing military strategy in war. ³⁰ Field-Marshal Count Helmuth von Moltke developed the modern system when Chief of the General Staff between 1857 and 1888. ³¹

In the 1880s the British Army was unprepared for war. Questions were asked in Parliament about the organisation of the armed forces. Stanhope, the War Secretary, evaded repeatedly the problem of War Office reform. In May 1887, Sir James Stephen's Royal Commission recommended a military ‘advising body’ for the Secretary of State. In July 1887, the Director of Military Intelligence, General Sir Henry Brackenbury, told Lord Randolph Churchill's Select Committee that the War Office needed a ‘central thinking department’ which corresponded to a ‘brain’ in the Army for the study and planning of possible wars. The Government ignored these official inquests and Stanhope made small changes at the War Office. ³² Wilkinson concluded that professionalised strategic planning was needed to support British policymaking. ‘So long as the British army is without a General Staff’, Wilkinson held, ‘it is impossible to consider any other military reform as of pressing importance’. Wilkinson thought the only way to change the minds of politicians ‘was through the general public’. ³³

An invasion panic in the summer of 1888 amplified criticism of the Government. It resulted in the appointment of a Royal Commission under the Marquis of Hartington to examine the civil and professional administration of the Army and Navy. Brackenbury was appointed to the Hartington Commission and proposed the formation of a general staff. Wilkinson ‘borrow[ed] General Brackenbury's metaphor’ and advocated for a strategic ‘brain’ for the Army. ³⁴ In a series of Manchester Guardian articles, Wilkinson echoed the consensus among the army reformers that Britain needed strategic planning and professional advice for the War Secretary. The creation of a general staff would form a ‘great school of war’ in the Army and provide a principal military adviser to the Secretary of State. ³⁵ Wilkinson explained that the scientific study of war and the practice of planning and conducting military operations was the secret of Prussian success. ³⁶ Wilkinson described how the General Staff was the ‘keystone’ of the whole German military system. ³⁷

Wilkinson accepted that the creation of a general staff had to be adapted to the British military system and the German experience should be used to improve the Army ‘without mere senseless imitation’. ³⁸ As Wilkinson told Roberts, the notion Britain should copy the Germans without understanding them was a great mistake. ³⁹ In theory, the ‘right way to copy the Germans’, Wilkinson conceded, was to get ‘a great strategist like Moltke’. ⁴⁰ However, in practice, as Wilkinson was finding out, ‘the problem [was] to create a system’, which retained the ‘practical advantages’ of the German General Staff and remained ‘suitable’ to the peculiar military and political conditions in Britain. ⁴¹

Wilkinson argued that in the British armed forces ‘knowledge and power are separated’. ⁴² The Secretary of State for War often preferred to ‘compromise’ between the ‘conflicting opinions’ of many ‘specialists’. ⁴³ The Army needed a single professional adviser responsible to the War Secretary at the top of an ‘intellectual hierarchy’. ⁴⁴ However, there was disagreement in the Army about the position of a single professional adviser. Would the next Chief replace Cambridge as Commander-in-Chief or become a newly created Chief of the General Staff? Whereas Wolseley was likely the next Commander-in-Chief, many believed that as the Director of Military Intelligence, Brackenbury would be chosen Chief of the General Staff. ⁴⁵ Wilkinson was ‘against the idea of a Chief of the Staff’. ⁴⁶ Wilkinson emphasised that the Army should aim at ‘bringing knowledge and power … into some necessary connection … with as little unnecessary change as possible’. ⁴⁷ In Britain, ‘little unnecessary change’ implied the Commander-in-Chief of the Army should also be the head of a general staff and the single professional adviser to the Secretary of State for War.

Wilkinson observed that the public had no description in plain English about how the German General Staff worked and might be applied to the British Army. ⁴⁸ Wilkinson wrote a series of articles on the Prussian General Staff and sent them to the Times, which rejected them. They were then revised and submitted to the editor of Macmillan's Magazine, who also rejected them. A professor at the Staff College, Colonel Frederick Maurice, and the Liberal politician, Sir Charles Dilke, encouraged Wilkinson to rework all the articles again, this time as chapters for a book entitled The Brain of an Army, which Macmillan accepted and published in 1890. ⁴⁹

The Brain of an Army explained the function of the German General Staff. Wilkinson admitted to Roberts, as his ‘own opinion as to what should be done’ in a British staff system ‘was not ripe’ he ‘avoided drawing a model’ to ‘keep a free hand to support’ the proposals of the Hartington Commission. ⁵⁰ The Brain of an Army showed how the General Staff was responsible for the preparation of strategic plans and not the administration of the Army. The General Staff constantly collected intelligence to assist in the preparation for probable wars. The German staff officer learned the method for the scientific study of military history at the War Academy in Berlin, and the General Staff exemplified ‘the advancement of learning’ by practicing ‘original research’ as the ‘true instrument of higher education’. Peace training was determined by the requirements of war, and strategical experience was developed by ‘frequent … practice and testing’ in the war game. An exemplary Chief of the General Staff, Wilkinson admired Motlke, a great intellect and character, who was both the ‘strategical director’ and the ‘one authorised adviser’ to the King. The ‘perfect understanding between the King and Moltke’, and Bismarck, the political counterpart, Wilkinson argued, in war ‘secured the harmony between the political and military direction’. Wilkinson concluded that a general staff as ‘the brain, and something more than the brain, of the army’, can be equally applied ‘to all civilised [sic] armies, and to all ordered warfare’. ⁵¹

The Brain of an Army appeared in February, on the same day the Hartington Commission Report was signed, just before the recommendations were published in March. The minutes of record were never made public to prevent further scrutiny, and The Brian of an Army functioned as supplementary evidence. The book was praised and read widely by both British and German officers. ⁵² It was appreciated by army reformers, like Wolseley, Maurice and Nicholson, who thought it improved the chances of the creation of a general staff. It also pleased supporters of the idea of a chief of staff, and impressed Roberts, an advocate of a powerful Commander-in-Chief. ⁵³ Dilke used it in his Problems of Greater Britain to advocate for a general staff as a ‘brain of Imperial Defence’. ⁵⁴

Motlke recognised it was perceptive but pointed out the ‘weakness of the book’ was that it overstated the ‘distinction between his position as Chief-of-the-Staff and that of a Commander-in-Chief’ of the Army. As Wilkinson later showed, ‘the distinction was nominal’ and Moltke ‘had an absolutely free hand’ as the director of operations and strategy. Moltke told Wilkinson that the British system lacked a ‘war commander in chief’ rather than a chief of staff. ⁵⁵ Another senior German officer declared that The Brain of an Army described so accurately ‘the organisation, spirit, and working’ of the German system that it was ‘on a par’ with General von der Goltz's The Nation in Arms. ⁵⁶ Indeed, von der Goltz ‘greatly admired’ Wilkinson's work which served ‘as a model’ for his own books. ⁵⁷ German military journals acclaimed The Brain of an Army and it was used as a text-book in the German Military Academy. ⁵⁸ The Brain of an Army shifted opinion about how Germany worked as exemplar for the reform of the British military system. ⁵⁹

III

The Hartington Commission Report recommended a Defence Committee of the Cabinet to support cooperation between the War Office and the Admiralty. The Commission reported that the office of the Commander-in-Chief was the main weakness of the present system and prevented the Secretary of State for War from receiving professional advice. Therefore, the Commission proposed to abolish the position of Commander-in-Chief and to create a War Office Council to give expert advice to the Secretary of State. Also, the Commission recommended the creation of a General Staff, described in the Report as a ‘Department of the Chief of the Staff’. In addition to War Office Council advice, the Chief of the Staff would advise the War Secretary on all military policy and the defence of Empire. ⁶⁰

The Hartington Commission pleased no one and met firm opposition. Indeed, Churchill and Campbell-Bannerman opposed the Commission Report. Churchill rejected the whole Report and proposed a scheme for a Ministry of Defence. Campbell-Bannerman feared a powerful Chief of the Staff and vetoed a general staff to defend civilian control of the Army. To the Queen and the Duke of Cambridge the chance publication of both the Commission Report and The Brain of an Army looked like a conspiracy. Wolseley, Roberts and Nicholson believed Brackenbury drafted the Commission Report and introduced a Chief of the Staff to serve his own ends. ⁶¹

Wilkinson was ‘bitterly disappointed’ with the recommendations of the Commission Report. ⁶² The Commission of ‘laymen’ and ‘politicians’ never considered ‘the essential point’ of getting the country ready for war, Wilkinson protested, the Report was preoccupied with putting ‘more power’ into the hands of Cabinet Ministers. ⁶³ Wilkinson drafted articles more precisely examining the Report's ‘disingenuousness’, which the editor of the Guardian, C. P. Scott, refused to publish. Wilkinson wrote that the Commission recommended a general staff without the power to prepare the Army for war. Whilst the German General Staff was the ‘the auxiliary instrument of command’, Wilkinson explained, the Commission proposed a department to support the Secretary in the administration of the Army. It was ‘a caricature’ that omitted the essential function of the German system. ⁶⁴ France had ‘a bastard Staff of the Minster of War’ like that outlined by the Commission, Wilkinson added, but it was ineffectual and replaced by a ‘Staff of the Army’ organised to ‘assist a commander to command’. ⁶⁵ Indeed, Wilkinson pointed out that the Commission's recommendation to abolish the Commander-in-Chief and distribute those powers to a ‘so-called Chief of the Staff’ and a new ‘Consultative Board’ would further undermine ‘authority and responsibility’ in the Army. ⁶⁶ Wilkinson accused the Commission of faddism:

Those who adopt the new-fangled idea of a thinking machine at the War Office, where a Secretary of State at a loss or a Commander-in-Chief in search of a plan of campaign can put a penny in the slot and find salvation, must not be allowed to allege that they are following precedent. ⁶⁷

Unless a general staff existed to support a commander, with the authority as the head of the Army, to think about and plan the conduct of possible future wars, then the military system would be ‘like a watch without a spring’, Wilkinson declared, and he could ‘hardly regret’ the Government shelved the Report. ⁶⁸

In 1892 the appointment of Campbell-Bannerman as Secretary of State for War blocked the short-term possibility of a general staff for the Army. A general staff was ‘dangerous’, Campbell-Bannerman told Parliament, and he did not want a chief of staff ‘shut up in a room’ so that ‘he might think’ about planning an aggressive military policy. Moreover, serious reform of the War Office seemed unlikely while the Duke of Cambridge remained Commander-in-Chief. Therefore, Wilkinson advocated the reform of Admiralty and proposed a general staff for the Royal Navy. ⁶⁹

Like the War Office the Admiralty had no organisation for strategic planning, no single professional adviser to the Cabinet, and no arrangement for coordinating with the Army. ⁷⁰ In 1895 Wilkinson wrote The Brain of the Navy, first as a set of articles for The Pall Mall Gazette, arguing for the First Sea Lord to be the chief of a naval staff system and the responsible ‘strategical adviser’ of the Cabinet, with the authority in peace and war for the direction of the Navy. Wilkinson argued that imperial defence needed the best naval and military ‘strategist’ as ‘war director’ for the Navy and the Army. ⁷¹

In the autumn of 1893, Dilke, then chairman of the Service Members Committee, asked Wilkinson what the Committee could do for Navy and Army reform. Therefore, in February 1894, they organised the ‘Joint Letter on National Defence’, sent to the Prime Minister and the leaders of the opposition parties, which recommended an executive head of the Navy and the Army as the single professional adviser to the Cabinet, responsible for both strategic planning in peace and command of operations in war. The manifesto argued that ‘war can never be successfully begun or conducted unless the exponent of strategy is in the body that has authority’. ⁷²

Most soldiers like Nicholson read the proposals ‘with the greatest satisfaction’. ⁷³ However, the ideas were unpopular with senior politicians like Joseph Chamberlain and Arthur Balfour, who while acknowledging the problems of national defence, refused to commit publicly to any specific proposals. ⁷⁴ In Parliament, Campbell-Bannerman declared the existing military system adequate and unalterable, and the political parties agreed the army reformers proposals were unacceptable. Yet, Campbell-Bannerman, who thought a defence committee was better than an expert adviser, was working privately with civil servants in the War Office on a scheme to create a committee of advisers to the Cabinet which embodied the recommendations of the Hartington Commission. ⁷⁵

In the summer of 1895, the Duke of Cambridge was pushed into retirement, and the group of army reformers Wilkinson advised moved a vote in the House of Commons against Campbell-Bannerman and on 24 June defeated the Liberal Government which resigned. Nicholson commended the success to Roberts, which was due to Dilke, Wilkinson, and the ‘military party’ in Parliament. ⁷⁶ According to Dilke, to save the Government from defeat, Campbell-Bannerman ‘promised a Commander-in-Chief who should be the Chief Military Adviser’ to the Cabinet. ⁷⁷

The Conservative leader Lord Salisbury formed a Government with the Liberal Unionists and appointed Lord Lansdowne as Secretary of State for War. Lansdowne adopted the scheme prepared by the civil servants in the War Office under Campbell-Bannerman which originated with the proposals of the Hartington Commission Report. The Government established a Defence Committee of the Cabinet under the Duke of Devonshire and reduced the powers of the Commander-in-Chief and the newly appointed Wolseley, putting the co-ordination of the military departments in the War Office under the direct control of the Secretary of State. Wilkinson pointed out in a new edition of the Brian of an Army that this ‘bad organisation’ would be ‘disastrous’ in war. ⁷⁸

The reorganisation of 1895 further removed the Cabinet from professional military advice. Salisbury ‘chose to ignore official channels and seek council’ from civilian specialists like Wilkinson and Dilke. ⁷⁹ Wilkinson offered to serve on the new Cabinet Committee of Defence, the creation of which he opposed, convinced no Government Minister had ‘thoroughly thought out the relations between policy, war, and naval and military preparation’. Wilkinson hoped that as Secretary of the Defence Committee he might do some of the work of a staff and draft occasional papers putting ‘essential questions … of vital importance to the nation’ before the Cabinet. Devonshire refused the offer, and did so again, when Wilkinson volunteered his brain at the beginning of the South African War. ⁸⁰

Wilkinson alleged politicians were ‘eager to be masters of the Army’. The Secretary of State ended up managing the military preparations of the armed forces, which as Wilkinson predicted, was a disaster during the early months of the South African War. Lansdowne, defending himself from blame during the crisis, declared that it was ‘impossible’ to balance the work of politics and national policy with military preparations and the conduct of war. ⁸¹ Wilkinson asserted that the War was ‘doing us good’ and ‘giving us the beginnings of political education’ about success in war which ‘depends on putting knowledge in power’. ⁸²

IV

On the eve of the emergency in South Africa, the High Commissioner, Alfred Milner, asked Wilkinson for military advice in the event of war against the Boers. Wilkinson suggested that in the absence of a general staff Milner should get the best staff officer in the Army as his military secretary. ⁸³ Politicians and soldiers had thought little about policy and strategy, and the War was badly managed by the Government and poorly conducted by the Army. It showed that Britain needed a general staff.

Roberts replaced Wolseley as Commander-in-Chief in late 1900 and in early 1901 he selected Nicholson as Director-General of Mobilisation and Military Intelligence at the War Office. Nicholson immediately ordered his staff to begin strategic planning. ⁸⁴ Nicholson proposed that Wilkinson should be Assistant-Director of Military Intelligence at the War Office. Wilkinson would deal with ‘matters of organisation and intelligence’ and help Nicholson establish an embryo general staff system for the Army. Wilkinson already advised Nicholson and regularly prepared historical summaries and explained strategic ideas. Wilkinson acted unofficially as the Intelligence Department historian and compiled military histories for the department staff. ⁸⁵ Roberts approved Wilkinson's appointment and the Cabinet agreed. Nicholson lobbied the Treasury for the additional expenditure noting the great resources of the German General Staff. ⁸⁶ Nicholson argued that Wilkinson would provide ‘great value to the War Office’. However, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Sir Michael Hicks Beach, committed to reducing military expenditure, refused the War Office the additional funding and the project was abandoned. ⁸⁷

Nicholson and Wilkinson continued the development of a general staff system at the Intelligence Department. Wilkinson visited Nicholson at his house in the evening on the way to the Morning Post newspaper and often went to the War Office. Wilkinson guided Nicholson's reading with references to the latest published books and wrote reviews for the department staff at the War Office. In a typical review which Roberts described as ‘quite excellent’ Wilkinson addressed ‘the professional advisers of the Government’ and explained how the complex problems of British strategy would not be fixed without a general staff doing ‘practical’ strategic planning to determine the ‘probable functions’ of the Army in war. ⁸⁸ Wilkinson questioned Nicholson for the Royal Commission on the Volunteers in May 1903 and they discussed the failures of the Defence Committee of the Cabinet to ‘decide anything’ about British strategy. ⁸⁹

Nicholson battled the Treasury for additions to the department staff. Hicks Beach claimed the Intelligence Department should not work on ‘what at Oxford is called research’. Nicholson replied that the Order in Council tasked the department with the study of strategic plans. ⁹⁰ Nicholson struggled against these attitudes and made a great success of something like a general staff in the Intelligence Department which Government and military departments could trust to produce detailed memorandums on any strategic issue. Nicholson worked writing these memoranda aided by Wilkinson and some very able soldiers including Lieutenant-Colonel William Robertson, Lieutenant-Colonel Edward Altham and Lieutenant-Colonel Charles Callwell. ⁹¹

Wilkinson remained optimistic that the ‘conversion’ of the War Office to a general staff system was ‘impending’. ⁹² Indeed, in 1903, Balfour, now Prime Minister, appointed Esher to chair a three-member committee, which included Clarke and Fisher, with Ellison as secretary, to report on the reform of the War Office. Clarke and Ellison recognised the part The Brain of an Army played in explaining the functions of the General Staff in the German military system. Clarke asserted that readers of ‘Wilkinson in particular’ and his ‘excellent’ work will be ‘able to judge’ the ‘vital importance’ of the General Staff ‘as the directing brain of an army’. The Conservative politician Leo Amery noted that Ellison made the ‘essential principle’ of the German General Staff organisation ‘first’ described in The Brian of an Army even more ‘clear’ than Wilkinson. ⁹³ Fisher concerned himself only about the Navy. ⁹⁴ Esher was a dilettante and entirely political.

The War Office (Reconstitution) Committee interviewed senior officers at the War Office and Nicholson advocated the idea of a General Staff. The Committee recorded no minutes of evidence. ⁹⁵ Esher had previously questioned Nicholson for the Royal Commission on the War in South Africa. Nicholson explained to Esher that the War Office ‘would only be improved by entirely reorganising’ and ‘adopting the staff organisation of France and Germany’ with ‘a chief of the staff, who does all the thinking part of the work’ and strategic planning. ⁹⁶ In a note added to the Report of the Royal Commission on the War in South Africa, Esher opposed Nicholson's opinion and instead argued for more power for the Secretary of State. Esher argued that ‘methods of Continental powers’ and the general staff system ‘are best avoided’ as British interests were ‘so different’ and complex that ‘all comparisons are misleading’. ⁹⁷ Esher proposed that a British general staff should be ‘freed from all executive duties’ and be exclusively devoted to thinking about theories of war and ‘military schemes’. This was ‘an amusing idea’, Wilkinson remarked, that the chief of a general staff should have ‘absolutely nothing to do with [the command of] the Army, but sits in an office making schemes of defence and compiling statistical handbooks’. Indeed, the German General Staff, as Strachan argued, was credited with ‘a more cerebral’ and theoretical approach to the study of war ‘than it did in fact implement’. Wilkinson pointed out that Esher's conception of a British general staff with ‘no executive function’ was from the Hartington Commission. ⁹⁸

The Esher Committee reported in early 1904 and proposed the General Staff as the brain of the Army. However, the Committee implemented the recommendations of the Hartington Commission Report and abolished the position of Commander-in-Chief and created the Chief of the General Staff as the first member of the Army Council controlled by the Secretary of State. The powers of the Commander-in-Chief were further absorbed by the War Secretary and the new Chief of the Staff had limited executive power. Haldane inevitably devolved these responsibilities back upon the members of the Army Council. Wilkinson noted that the Esher Committee ‘laid down a cut-and-dried scheme, not on any account to be altered’, and evidently, they ‘did not trust’ the ‘Brain to think out’ the organisation or direction of the Army. ⁹⁹

The Committee decided the War Office required a ‘clean sweep’. Wilkinson wrote Amery that he could not ‘conceive why’ they were ‘so determined to get rid of Nicholson’ from ‘a general staff [which] strikes me as the best part of their programme’. ¹⁰⁰ Esher's triumvirate reckoned Nicholson was a formidable opponent of their strategic plans. Fisher disliked ‘Old Nick’ because he opposed the Admiralty during the invasion inquiries of 1903. Clarke distrusted Nicholson because he did not ‘run straight’ and would become Commander-in-Chief like Fisher without his genius. Most tellingly, Clarke mentioned Nicholson ‘leaking’ information to Wilkinson. ¹⁰¹ Clarke and Esher believed Wilkinson supported Nicholson as the most likely first Chief of the Staff.

Esher also proposed a permanent secretary of the Committee of Imperial Defence to lead a ‘supradepartmental’ defence staff ‘suited to our Imperial requirements’ presided over by the Prime Minister. Balfour told Esher the weakness of the system would be confusion between the work of the General Staff and the Secretariat. The Prime Minister predicted the ‘two Headquarter staff’ would ‘polarise into a kind of natural opposition’. Esher realised the General Staff under Nicholson would be a strong counterbalance to the Committee of Imperial Defence. ¹⁰² Therefore, when the Government adopted the Esher Committee scheme, they dismissed Nicholson.

V

The General Staff was dysfunctional in the absence of strong leadership and proper organisation. Wilkinson hoped Britain would have ‘a few years of peace’ to cover the expected ‘transition period’. ¹⁰³ However, as Gooch argued, since Balfour was no longer interested in the General Staff ‘there was no political stimulus to its proper development’. Clarke called the General Staff ‘in danger of shipwreck’. The Secretary of State for War, Arnold-Forster, wrote that the Chief of the General Staff, Sir Neville Lyttleton, was ‘not at all capable’. Most soldiers realised the Army Council lacked leadership. As one officer declared, the only solution to the prospect of ‘nothing but years of chaos in front of us’ was the appointment of Nicholson as Chief of the General Staff. Esher and Clarke grudgingly accepted the idea of bringing Nicholson back into the War Office and Arnold-Forster approached Nicholson about becoming Chief of the General Staff. Yet Lyttleton was unmoveable and refused the Gibraltar Command. ¹⁰⁴

In two articles in May 1905, Lieutenant-Colonel Charles à Court Repington, then the military correspondent of The Times, warned his readers that the Army had not established a working Staff system. Colonel Repington urged the Secretary of State to create a modern General Staff on the principles described by Wilkinson ‘for anyone to understand’ and ‘popularised’ in the ‘admirable’ work The Brain of an Army. ¹⁰⁵ Repington echoed Wilkinson, the Esher Committee had not made the General Staff the ‘mainspring of the military machine’ and restricted the Chief ‘to the narrow precincts of a small compartment’. As Repington concluded, ‘Bits of the framework of a Great General Staff system at headquarters have been juxtaposed awaiting the attention of the master builder’. ¹⁰⁶

Repington summarised the criticisms Wilkinson made in earlier articles about the War Office (Reconstitution) Committee Report. Wilkinson condemned the ‘futility’ of the Esher scheme to provide the Prime Minister with a Staff by creating a secretariat of the Committee of Imperial Defence to ‘perform the double function of a naval and a military general staff under a single chief called secretary’. Wilkinson regarded the ‘conception as a chimera’ without the ‘essence of a general staff’ which was as a ‘highly expert body’. ¹⁰⁷ Wilkinson restated that success in war required the Chief of the General Staff to be the ‘executive authority’ over the military departments of the War Office, should study in a ‘systematic or scientific character’ the ‘conditions of war’ and prepare strategic plans as the single professional adviser to the Secretary of State. Moreover, Wilkinson concluded, ‘knowledge of war’ should be ‘given its due place of power at the War Office’. ¹⁰⁸ The Chief of the Staff should have an enlarged role and a strengthened position. As Wilkinson complained, the ‘officer was there in the person of Sir William Nicholson … the ablest officer in the British Army’, and the most ‘monstrous act’ of the Esher Committee was to remove Nicholson from his post. ¹⁰⁹

In June 1905, Esher and Clarke wrote a supplementary memorandum on the General Staff as a Committee of Imperial Defence paper, and they borrowed their arguments about the functions of a General Staff in national defence from Wilkinson. They reluctantly admitted they were responsible for not getting the General Staff started and somewhat disingenuously wrote that ‘we purposely refrained from making detailed proposals and preferred to lay down general principles which would serve as a guide for the preparation of a definite scheme’. On the contrary, the absence of clarity was purposeful, and as Wilkinson had noted, the Esher Committee scheme was ‘not to be altered’. Nevertheless, the memorandum recommended in addition to studying and advising on military strategy the General Staff would now have officers on ‘Command Staffs’ with ‘defined duties in war and in peace’ to help the Chief of the General Staff get the Army ready for war. The General Staff should conduct Staff Rides ‘raising the intellectual standard of the Army’ for ‘General Staff duties’ and ‘high command’. Moreover, it was ‘essential’ the General Staff contained the ‘best brains in the army’ to build a uniformity of thought and create military doctrine. Importantly, the General Staff needed a more active Chief in complete control over strategic planning as the single military adviser to the Secretary of State. ¹¹⁰ Arnold-Forster accepted the conclusions of the memorandum but questioned the sincerity of Esher: ‘I never really know what this clever and agreeable man is driving at. Whether he actually intends to help me or not’. ¹¹¹ Indeed, as Esher admitted to Clarke, the ‘German model is going to be our curse. However, we cannot now go back’. ¹¹²

When Haldane became Secretary of State for War in December 1905 he appointed Nicholson Quartermaster-General. Nicholson had a direct influence on the organisation of the War Office as a member of the Army Council. ¹¹³ Indeed, Haldane ‘was anxious to have [his] assistance’, Nicholson told Roberts, and ‘when an opportunity occurred, [Haldane] would endeavour to make [him] Chief of the Staff’. ¹¹⁴ Moreover, as Spiers argued, Haldane ‘virtually dispensed with the Army Council as an advisory body; only seeking assistance from the intellectually able, he relied upon individual members of the Council like Nicholson’ to outline ‘comprehensive’ schemes and reform the General Staff. ¹¹⁵ Haldane developed an excellent working relationship with Nicholson who tutored him about the work of the General Staff.

Wilkinson transmitted the principles of a general staff to Haldane. ¹¹⁶ In mid-December Wilkinson sent a copy of his work on the German General Staff. ¹¹⁷ Wilkinson warned Haldane about the problems with the report of the War Office (Reconstitution) Committee. Haldane reassured Wilkinson that the ‘Esher Report is far from being like Holy Writ’ but as the scheme which created the present General Staff system it offered assumptions ‘to work under’. Haldane understood ‘the point’ made in both the 1904 Esher Report and the 1905 Esher memorandum on the General Staff that Administration and Command in the Army should be divided. Haldane recognised that the General Staff being ‘entangled in administration’ was ‘a fatal confusion’. Haldane informed Wilkinson that ‘I watch daily the people who ought to be thinking and teaching in the Army being loaded with administrative details’. ¹¹⁸ Indeed, Wilkinson advocated for a Chief of the General Staff with both the authority to command the Army and the freedom to think about war. Moreover, like in Germany the administration of the Army should be the responsibility of the War Secretary.

Wilkinson and Nicholson challenged the Esher Committee Report. Haldane reassured Esher that he agreed with the principles set out in his letters, reports and papers. But Esher was sceptical about the receptivity of Haldane to their ideas and confessed to Clarke that clearly the General Staff ‘is going to be our Frankenstein’. ¹¹⁹ By the end of December Haldane was ‘now engrossed’ with The Brain of an Army and told Wilkinson he had ‘put aside all other work to read through’. Haldane explained ‘how opportunely this book has come to me. We have now – for better or for worse – the Esher system, and the first beginnings of a general staff. But this has still to be worked out’ into a strategic planning brain with Nicholson. ¹²⁰ The ‘personal interest and enthusiasm’ of Haldane and Nicholson, as Gooch showed, played ‘the greatest role in the development of the General Staff’. ¹²¹ In early February 1906 Wilkinson told Haldane to read The Nation in Arms by von der Goltz to learn about the function of a general staff in the command of armies. A few days later Wilkinson met Haldane at the War Office and they discussed the schemes. ¹²² Wilkinson approved Haldane's ‘sound and sane’ ideas for Britain to ‘have the Army which it needs, composed of a great General Staff as the organ of direction, thought, and will, of a striking force first rate in quality and ready for action’. ¹²³

Haldane joked revealingly with a close friend that ‘I do not need to know anything about armies and their organisation, for the five reports of Elihu Root, made as Secretary for War in the United States, are the very last word concerning the organisation and place of an army in a democracy’. Haldane studied Root's reform of the American system and his creation of the General Staff. Yet Root visited London in 1903 and explained to Wilkinson that he ‘drew heavily on’ The Brain of an Army. Consequently, the new American Chief of the General Staff had ‘complete control’ of the Army and was the single professional adviser to the Secretary of War. ¹²⁴ Indeed, Wilkinson highlighted the American General Staff to demand similar changes in Britain. ¹²⁵

Wilkinson completed Haldane's ‘process of military self-education’ in public. ¹²⁶ Wilkinson bombarded Haldane and the readers of the Morning Post with criticism of the Esher Report system and in particular the idea that the General Staff was solely a ‘thinking’ department devoted to ‘theoretical’ study. This notion, Wilkinson explained, was a convenient ‘theory’ and the ‘invention of politicians’ concerned about civilian control of the Army. ‘It was all nonsense’ and denied the Secretary of State professional advice from direct communication with the Chief of the General Staff. The Cabinet might understand money or civil life, but politicians should ask soldiers about war. ¹²⁷ Wilkinson claimed the Esher Report was political and doubted whether the Committee were acquainted ‘with the working and functions of the General Staffs in Continental Armies’. ¹²⁸ Wilkinson declared that the Report should ‘be allowed to drop’ and the Army should ‘be allowed to think’ about war and work on strategic planning. ¹²⁹

Haldane talked about ‘a new science of military organisation’ and Wilkinson responded that this was ‘pretty well known’ to Napoleon and in Germany. ¹³⁰ In March Haldane wrote a preface to Science in Public Affairs (1906) and argued that rival nations were better equipped in the sciences than Britain. Haldane wrote that organisation and ‘science is essential to victory … in the arts of war’ and explained that ‘the separation of command and organisation in war from supply and administrative details, and the resulting establishment of the general staff’ illustrated the importance of organised thought to success on a large scale. Moreover, Haldane concluded, organised thought required ‘not only the expert, but the highest type of expert knowledge’ and ‘brain power’. ¹³¹ Wilkinson suggested Haldane should show the ‘confidence in military science’ he ‘recently expressed’ and listen to the ‘expert knowledge’ of the Chief of the Staff and ‘no one else’. ¹³² Wilkinson remained concerned that in the Army Estimates Haldane described the General Staff ‘only as a thinking department’. Wilkinson again restated that the General Staff was a department for the ‘systematic study’ of war applied to thinking about practical problems of military command and strategic planning for the conduct of war. ¹³³

On 12 September 1906, Haldane issued an Army Order and an accompanying memorandum that established the General Staff on a modern basis. The explanatory memorandum showed that Haldane moved away from the ‘theoretical’ model instigated by Esher and adopted most of the ideas of the ‘practical’ system ‘on lines well understood in most foreign armies’ proposed by Wilkinson. The function of the General Staff was research in all the areas of ‘military science’ and strategic planning for possible future wars, and included ‘the strategical distribution of the Army, … the training and preparation of the Army for war, to study military schemes, offensive and defensive, … [and] to direct the General policy in Army matters’. Haldane concluded loftily that the General Staff should create a unity of thought giving ‘common ideas even in matters of detail’ which might ‘become a real bond of union’ between the ‘military forces of the Empire’. ¹³⁴ Wilkinson asserted that Haldane had ‘got hold of a sound idea’ and organised the War Office ‘in accordance with the requirements of war’. Although the ‘popular essay’ accompanying the Army Order had ‘faults’, Wilkinson wrote tactfully, Haldane deserved ‘credit for doing the best he can’ because ‘it may lead to improvements’. ¹³⁵ Whilst only the Secretary of State could create a European army, the General Staff could now properly plan for war in Europe. The new General Staff resembled the Prussian model but adapted to British circumstances. ¹³⁶

In April 1908 Nicholson was appointed the Chief of the General Staff. By 1909 the Army had a properly functioning General Staff system. Nicholson influenced significantly the development of British strategic planning. Moreover, Haldane and Nicholson proposed an Imperial General Staff. Wilkinson observed that ‘Haldane had been led to see that a central General Staff of this type is necessary, not for the United Kingdom only, but also for the Empire’. Wilkinson praised the ‘excellent’ Nicholson memorandum which called for the ‘uniformity’ of Imperial Staff organisation and explained that ‘the real meaning is that all the leaders and trainers should have come to look at the operations of war from the same point of view’. ¹³⁷ Wilkinson wrote that the General Staff has ‘done a great deal of valuable work of which the public can have no knowledge’. Wilkinson mentioned particularly the publication of the Field Service Regulations (1909) which developed the principles of the British Army for the conduct of operations in war. ‘They embody a well-digested view of war in modern conditions’, Wilkinson explained, ‘a distinct addition to the existing English literature of the art of war’ and ‘evidence’ that ‘professional study has now taken root in the Army’. ¹³⁸

The Army's new ‘professional’ strategic planning provided the War Office with political and strategic momentum over the Admiralty which ‘abandoned the field’ and failed to produce a comparable strategy department. ¹³⁹ In August 1911 Haldane threatened to resign unless the Prime Minister H. H. Asquith reorganised the Admiralty. In 1912 the Admiralty War Staff was created. ¹⁴⁰ Wilkinson ultimately succeeded in his advocacy for a general staff for the Army and the Navy.

VI

Wilkinson advocated the creation of a modern general staff system for the professionalisation of British strategic planning. In so doing, Wilkinson transmitted the essence of the German General Staff into English. Importantly, Wilkinson popularised the idea of a ‘strategic brain’ of an army in the United Kingdom and United States. This stimulated the creation of military research and strategic planning systems in Britain and America. First, Wilkinson helped Nicholson establish an embryo general staff system in the Intelligence Department. Then, Root created the American General Staff system with Wilkinson's works. Later, Haldane reformed the British General Staff system with Nicholson's assistance and Wilkinson's ideas.

The new General Staff played a major part in the formulation of British strategy. In particular, the Staff started to think about the practicalities of a European war. The coordination of strategic planning in the General Staff proved a great advantage to the Army. The Army was better prepared for strategic discussions at the meetings of the Committee of Imperial Defence. The General Staff provided the Army with a coherent argument for a Continental strategy and contested Admiralty war plans and British maritime strategy. This success of the Army General Staff led to the establishment of the Admiralty War Staff. Significantly, the General Staff shaped British strategy for the First World War.

The Esher Committee did not intend to establish a functioning Army general staff system and planned for the Committee of Imperial Defence to conduct British strategy. In making the British General Staff, Haldane, Nicholson and Wilkinson, brought to life Esher's Frankenstein. It killed Esher's ascendant power over British strategic planning.