ABSTRACT
In recent years a ‘revisionist’ view of Britain’s political and strategic role in the First World War has developed. Works by David French, Keith Neilson, David Dutton and this author have stressed the coalition nature of the First World War and the constraints which it placed upon Britain’s policy makers and military commanders.1 These authors have moved the debate on Britain’s wartime policy and strategy away from the school of historiography which studies British political and military decision making in a vacuum,2 and have attempted to evaluate the extent to which a ‘national’ policy was possible in the context of a close military alliance, developing what Neilson characterizes as ‘a new “alliance” view of British strategy’ .3
