After the South African war a special committee, known as the "War Office Reconstitution Committee" was set up in 1903 with Lord Esher in the chair. This committee found that the lack of a trained general staff and the fact that some of the most important duties of such a staff were not assigned to any body of officers gravely prejudiced the conduct of operations in South Africa, and that it therefore attached extreme importance to the constitution of a general staff.
The Committee also advocated the abolition of the office of commander-in-chief instituted by the Duke of York in 1795 and its replacement by a Chief of the General Staff and an Army Council, whose function it would be to control and administer the army in accordance with the policy of the government and to act in an advisory capacity to the Secretary of State for War. These recommendations were adopted, and in February 1904 Lord Roberts, the commander-in-chief, retired and the new Army Coun cil came into being. Its first task was the creation of a general staff charged with the duties of advising on the strategical dis tribution of the army: supervising its training and preparation for war ; collecting and collating military intelligence ; direct ing the general policy of the army and securing continuity of ac tion in the execution of that policy. And so for the first time in British military history the staff became a well balanced organi zation with two clearly defined functions : on the one side the preparation of plans, training and conduct of operations dealt with by the general staff, and on the other the supply of personnel and material, medical arrangements, transportation and quarter ing dealt with by the administrative staff which also controls the necessary services such as the R.A.S.C., ordnance, medical and veterinary services. But it is important to note that, although the work is divided into separate branches, there is but one staff with a single purpose, namely to assist the commander when framing his plan and the troops and services in carrying it out. The division of staff duties under the two main heads of operations and administration is now the key-note of the British system.
In 1904, in accordance with another and very important rec ommendation of the Esher Committee, the Defence Committee of the Cabinet was reconstituted as the Committee of Imperial Defence, whose function it was to act in an advisory capacity to the government, ensure continuity of policy and co-ordinate the work of all government departments concerned in national de fence. Prior to the formation of the Committee of Imperial De fence there existed no precedent for the formation of a council of war, or any standing advisory body to assist the Cabinet in time of peace in matters of national defence. An Imperial De
fence Conference was held in 1909 at which it was decided that the general staff at the War Office should be made responsible for advising the government on all matters connected with the defence and military preparation of the Empire as a whole; the Chief of the General Staff became Chief of the Imperial General Staff responsible for the preparation of plans and estimates of the imperial forces required to give effect to these plans.
Following the report of the Esher Committee the staff system was modernized and developed, with the result that at the out break of the World War the task of mobilizing the expeditionary force and despatching it to France was carried out with extraor dinary smoothness and efficiency. In the field also the new sys tem stood the test and strain of war very well in spite of the difficulty of meeting the demands of the largely expanded army. But, as regards the higher direction of the war, matters did not proceed so smoothly. In its conception in 1904 the Imperial General Staff was designed to have responsibility for providing the government with advice ; it was however at first mainly oc cupied in shaping a policy for the direction of affairs within the army itself and thus failed to study at all adequately its main function in relation to the supreme direction of imperial mili tary policy.