discussed at these meetings, but other Ministers (including Lord Crewe, Sir Edward Grey, Lord Morley, Mr. Lloyd George, and Lord Harcourt) attended regularly.  The function of this committee was to consider strategical difficulties with which the nation might conceivably find itself confronted, and to work out the solutions.  It was a committee the members of which were selected and summoned by the Prime Minister, to whom it was advisory.  He determined the subjects to be investigated.  Secrecy was of course essential, excepting so far as the Cabinet was concerned.  The presence of the non-military Ministers to whom I have referred was a proper guarantee that from the Cabinet there was no desire to withhold information.  Possible operations on the Continent of our army occupied much of the time of the committee.  About the propriety of the conversations which took place between members of the General Staffs of France and England questions have been raised.  But these conversations were concerned with purely technical matters, and doubts as to their justification will hardly arise in the minds of people who are aware what modern war implies in the way of preliminary inquiries as to its conditions.

We were not engaging in any secret undertaking.  We were merely providing what modern military requirements had rendered essential.  Without study beforehand by a General Staff military operations in these days are bound to fail.  If at any time we had, by any chance whatever, to operate in France it was essential that our generals should possess long in advance the knowledge that was requisite, and this could only be obtained with the assistance of the General Staff of France itself.  We committed ourselves to no undertaking of any kind, and it was from the first put in writing that we could not do so.  The conversations were just the natural and informal outcome of our close friendship with France.

The French had said that if it was to be regarded as even possible that we should come to their assistance in resisting an attack, which might, moreover, result if successful in great prejudice to our own security in the Channel, we should find this study vital.  Our General Staff took the same view, and at the request of Sir Edward Grey, who had written to him, I saw Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman at his house in London in January, 1906.  He was a very cautious man, but he was also an old War Minister.  He at once saw the point, and he gave me authority for directing the Staff at the War Office to take the necessary steps.  He naturally laid down that the study proposed was to be carefully guarded, so far as any possible claim of commitment was concerned, that it was not to go beyond the limits of purely General Staff work, and further that it should not be talked about.  The inquiry into conditions thus set on foot was conducted by the three successive generals who occupied the position of Director of Military Operations—­the late General Grierson, General Ewart, and General Wilson.  Each of these distinguished soldiers from time to time explained the progress made in working out conceivable plans for using the Expeditionary Force in France and in more distant regions, to the full Committee of Imperial Defense, and obtained its provisional approval.