fore the war. As to the bulk of these preparations I speak
from direct knowledge.

The Expeditionary Force, the Territorial Force, and the Special Reserve
had been organized under my own eye, by soldiers who had studied modern
war upon what was in this country a wholly new principle. Before they
took matters in hand not only was there no divisional organization, but
hardly a brigade could have been sent to the Continent without being
recast. For there used to be a peace organization that was different
from the organization that was required for war, and to convert the
former into the latter meant a delay that would have been deadly. Swift
mobilization, like that of the Germans even in 1870, was in these older
days impracticable.

All this had been changed for the Regular Army at home by the end of
1908, and it was after that year easy to mobilize. Other changes, also
of a sweeping character, had been made to complete the new structure. On
August 4, 1914, Lord Kitchener took delivery of an army in being, small,
but not inferior in quality to the best that the enemy possessed. With
the creation of the new armies, for which the Expeditionary Force was
the pattern--and, indeed, with the general management of the war--I had
very little to do. But I saw a good deal of Lord Kitchener, enough to
impress me from the day when he became War Minister with his
extraordinary individuality and his remarkable courage and energy, and
to make me feel what an invaluable asset his personality was for putting
heart into the British nation.

I have referred to my own and earlier part in the matter only to make
plain that I do not speak about it from mere hearsay. And to say this
has been necessary, because I shall have to submit some observations
which, if true, do not harmonize with assertions made by some of the
critics of the successive Governments which were at work on the business
of preparation for possible contingencies between 1906 and 1914. I will,
however, begin by making these critics a present of a definite
admission. We never intended to create an army capable of invading or
encircling Germany, and we should, in our own view, have found ourselves
unable to do so even had we desired any such thing.

Our purpose was quite a different one. It was purely defensive. We knew
how high a level of military organization had been attained in France.
She had a large army, an army not so large as that of Germany, but
comparable with it i