The Walrus and the Penguin (III)
The Mobilization of the British Army (1914-1916)
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In September of 1906, Richard Burdon Haldane, then serving as Secretary of State for War, gave a speech in which he explained that, in the event of a major war, the Territorial Force could be expanded into a ‘nation-in-arms’ of ‘seven, eight, or even nine hundred thousand men’.1 Unfortunately for Mr. Haldane, this speech created confusion about the size of the peace-time organization of part-time soldiers he was proposing.2 It is thus not surprising that, in the eight years that followed, neither the speeches that Haldane gave, the memoranda he circulated within the government, nor the text of the Territorial and Reserve Forces Act made any mention of mass mobilization in the event of a major war.3