ABSTRACT
The organization of a nation for war depends upon its external policy. The basis of our national policy had always been and remained the maintenance of peace, so that our whole attitude towards war preparations was governed by an intense desire to avoid any suggestion of provocation or aggression. The Army, however, as compared with the Navy, suffered for a time from the conflicting views of successive Secretaries of State, and it was not until Haldane took charge that our military policy took permanent shape. The Expeditionary Force, the Territorial Force, and the Special Reserve had been organized under his own eye, by soldiers who had studied modern war upon what was in this country a wholly new principle. In July 1905 Balfour decided to appoint a sub-committee of the Committee of Imperial Defence to study combined naval and military operations.
