ABSTRACT
The signing of the Entente Cordiale in 1904 and a thawing in relations between Britain and Russia, however, diminished the strategic importance of Egypt as a bulwark of imperial defence and bolstered the feeling that it was safe from land-based aggression. Moreover, the War Office and the new Committee of Imperial Defence (CID) reckoned that the Ottoman Empire constituted a political buffer between Egypt and threats from the east, while the Suez Canal made a convenient physical barrier. The secretary of the CID, George Clarke, agreed that conditions in Syria and Sinai made any large-scale ground invasion absolutely, but believed that a passive defensive posture was inadequate and proposed that offensive measures be taken against any kind of military encroachment or even the threat of such an act. Wingate's intention, after the war in the Sudan, to separate military intelligence from civilian intelligence and retain it as part of the Egyptian army, changed after his appointment to the Sudan.
