First Published in 1981. The essays collected together in this volume deal, for the most part, with the two themes which have seemed to the author the most significant and the most intriguing in the passage made by the military in Britain from the Victorian age to World War. The major theme is that of the transition of military strategy and policy from a preoccupation with the limited, though by no means undemanding, requirements of a sprawling empire in an age of diplomatic self-sufficiency to the enormous burdens of continental involvement in Europe against Germany, as the mass army replaced the capital fleet in the world's military pecking order.
Chapter 1 The Bolt from the Blue;
Chapter 2 Attitudes to War in Late
Victorian and Edwardian England;
Chapter 3 Great Britain and the Defence of
Canada, 18961914;
Chapter 4 Sir George Clarkes Career at the Committee of
Imperial Defence, 19041907;
Chapter 5 Mr Haldanes Army:Military
Organization and Foreign Policy in England, 19067;
Chapter 6 The War Office
and the Curragh Incident;
Chapter 7 Soldiers, Strategy and War Aims in
Britain, 19141918;
Chapter 8 The Maurice Case;
John Gooch Lecturer in History University of Lancaster
