ABSTRACT
Despite all the pre-war planning orchestrated by the Committee of Imperial Defence, the governmental machine was unevenly prepared when hostilities started, and continued thereafter to be poorly co-ordinated. It had foreseen neither that war would last so long, nor the ‘total war’ nature of the conflict, directly involving a large proportion of the population; but the disorganisation continued because of lack of a department charged with a wider overview, and with overall direction beyond the military. There was nothing akin to the modern Cabinet Office until David Lloyd George 1 established his War Cabinet after he became Prime Minister in late 1916. Its Secretariat was created out of the CID, and Hankey was from then until well into the interwar years the leader and developer of the nascent department.
