ABSTRACT
The General Staff was just as deluded as the British public in its conviction that the struggle would be short and decisive, the outbreak of war in August 1914 on the outbreak of war in August 1914. There was consequently little attempt to restrain the instinctive impulse of every senior officer fit for active service and many who were not to dash off to France with the Expeditionary Force. As a political appointment designed to unite the nation in support of the war and of the Government Asquith's selection of Lord Kitchener to replace himself at the War Office proved fully justified. Kitchener would have found ample outlet for his ferocious energy and industry had he confined himself to the normal duties of a civilian Secretary of State for War, notably the recruitment and administration of by far the largest army Britain had ever put in the field.
