Note 502 — BOOK VIII THE AGE OF THE GREAT POWERS (continued 7)

“What mainly was wrong with our generalship was the system which put the High Command into the hands of a group of men belonging to the old school of war, unable by reason of their age and traditions to get away from rigid methods, and to become elastic in face of new conditions. Our Staff College had been hopelessly inefficient in its system of training, if I am justified in forming such an opinion from specimens produced by it, who had the brains of canaries and the manners of Potsdam. There was also a close corporation among the officers of the Regular Army, so that they took the lion’s share of Staff appointments, thus keeping out brilliant young men of the New Armies, whose brain power, to say the least of it, was on a higher level than that of the Sandhurst standard.” Philip Gibbs, Realities of War.