In 1907, three years after the Entente Cordiale, the Foreign Secretary, Sir Edward Grey, signed another conciliatory document, the Anglo-Russian Convention, which ended decades of dispute between the two countries over Afghanistan and India. It is important to stress that both these agreements, the Entente Cordiale and the Anglo-Russian Convention, were intended simply to resolve issues raised by Britain's imperial expansion. There was no military element in either agreement or any commitment for the future; Britain did not become a member of the 1894 Franco-Russian alliance or make any formal military alliance with France. Even so, these measures were watched uneasily by the Kaiser and added to his conviction about encirclement, an ingrained, neurotic belief that the other powers in Europe were gathering like jackals around the frontiers of the Second Reich.
However, the German Naval Laws of 1897 and 1900 underlined Britain's need for allies. The Reichstag bill of 1897 authorized the building of sixteen 'ships of the line' (battleships or cruisers) by 1900, and this programme went ahead quickly. Then, in October 1899, immediately after the outbreak of the Boer War, when, not coincidentally, Britain's attention was otherwise engaged, the Kaiser demanded another increase in the size of the High Seas Fleet. The bill introduced in 1900 proposed building three battleships a year for the next six years, and was seen in London as a direct threat to Britain's maritime supremacy and the security of the British Empire.
One result of this was a naval arms race following Britain's decision to outbuild the German yards and maintain a two-nation maritime supremacy. Another was the Anglo-Japanese Alliance signed on 30 January 1902. The terms of the alliance- that each party would support the other if it was attacked by two or more powers but remain neutral if the attack came from only one power-were not likely to involve either party in an aggressive war. The advantage from Britain's point of view was a reduction in the threat to her possessions in the Far East, enabling the Admiralty to withdraw capital ships from Hong Kong and Singapore to reinforce the Mediterranean and the Grand Fleet.
Paul M. Kennedy argues that 'the Anglo-Japanese Alliance, by lessening Britain's links with Germany and by strengthening the Japanese in their determination to stand up to Russia, was to pro vide one of the causes for the creation of the Anglo-French Entente'. (12) Perhaps, but the creation of that Entente received its greatest public boost in 1903 when Edward VII made a state visit to Paris. 'Though Edward neither initiated nor influenced his country's policy', writes Barbara Tuchman, 'his personal diplomacy made the change possible.' (13)
Edward had made many private visits to Paris during his days as Prince of Wales but this state visit was both public and political and made against diplomatic advice that the King of England would not be welcome in the French capital. At first this seemed to be true. Again according to Tuchman: 'On his arrival the crowds were sullen and silent except for a few taunting cries of "Vivent les Boers" or "Vive Fashoda" which the King ignored. When an aide muttered, "The French don't like us", Edward replied, "Why should they?" and continued bowing and smiling from his carriage.’ (14)
King Edward's charm offensive against the general flow of French public opinion continued for the next four days. He attended troop reviews and the races at Longchamps, he lunched at the Quai d'Orsay and waved to the audience from his box at the theatre; everywhere he was smiling and gracious and full of compliments, about the French, French culture and the pleasures of the ville lumiere, and gradually the public mood changed. 'When he left', writes Tuchman, 'the crowds now shouted "Vive notre Roi!"' (15) Tuchman appends the comment of the Belgian ambassador to France: 'Seldom has such a complete change of attitude been seen as that which has taken place in this country. He has won the hearts of all the French.’ (16)
The King had achieved more than a merely personal success; his visit had altered the public mood and made political change possible. Within a year this change became official in the form of the Anglo-French Entente Cordiale. The Entente quickly came to have much greater significance for Anglo-French relations than its clauses would suggest. (17)
Article 1 and Article 2 of the Entente confirmed that the French would not interfere with British control of Egypt and the British agreed that they recognized French interests in Morocco. Both countries confirmed that they had no intention of altering the political status of either country; the sum total of nine articles signed on 8 April 1904 was the settlement of any dispute, present or pending, between France and Britain along the North African coast; the Secret Articles, five in number, dealt with procedures for the settlement of any future dispute.
The Entente actually served a more fundamental purpose. It put an official end to centuries of Anglo-French animosity. It agreed, as in the quoted cases of Egypt and Morocco, that the two countries' national interests should be complementary rather than competitive, that there was room for the diplomatic settlement of disputes. The Entente implicitly conceded that the two nations needed each other and must unite in their common interest- not least in resisting any challenge from Imperial Germany.
All this represented a complete volte-face in Anglo-French relations, and was seen as such by the other countries of Europe, not least Germany. Neither the Kaiser nor his closest advisers had believed that Britain would ever come to terms with France and announce that fact in a formal declaration. In fact, between the 'Fashoda Incident' of 1898 and the signing of the Entente Cordiale in 1904 British relations with France underwent a complete transformation, moving from outright hostility and threats of war to a formal declaration of friendship. In the ten years after the signing of the Entente this process would continue, but many other obstacles, military and political, would have to be removed before the BEF sailed for France in 1914.
The first decade of the twentieth century diverted Britain from nineteenth-century notions of 'splendid isolation', rocked any reliance on a 'blue water' maritime strategy for national defence based on the world wide deployment of the British fleet, and increased national concern for the security of the empire - and Britain. Between 1900 and 1914 Britain had to face the centuries’ old problem of the balance of power in Europe, a balance fatally upset by the establishment of the German empire in 1871.
Fashoda was a turning point in Franco-British relations; it changed old enemies into potential allies. The core of that alliance would be military. In considering the development of the British Army up to the outbreak of the First World War it is necessary to revert briefly to the time before Fashoda and acknowledge that the BEF that went to France in 1914 was, essentially, a Victorian army, manned and staffed by soldiers steeped in the rigid beliefs of the Victorian period.
Throughout the nineteenth century the British Army was the poor relation of the Royal Navy. Both had been greatly reduced in size at the end of the Napoleonic Wars, but the Royal Navy had embraced the century's expanding technology and the 'wooden walls' of England had gradually been replaced by the most powerful battle fleet in the world, a force instilled with Nelsonian ardour and buttressed by considerable public esteem.
For some reason - and in spite of the fact that Napoleon's downfall came at Waterloo rather than at Trafalgar - this public regard did not extend to the soldiery. Although the British Army had not been engaged on the Continent since 1815 it was far from idle and retained its fighting spirit in a long series of campaigns. During the nineteenth century, the British Army fought no less than seventeen separate wars, in countries as far apart as Canada and New Zealand, South Africa and Afghanistan. These years had seen a mixture of victory and defeat in various colonial campaigns, the general shambles of the Crimea War in the 1840s and some truly startling demonstrations of incompetence during the South African War of 1899-1902. However, although all Britain's wars ended eventually in victory, one notable feature of the British military during this period was stubborn resistance to change.
For at least half a century after Waterloo the British Army remained in a Napoleonic time warp; the Duke of Wellington could have risen from his recent grave to c
ommand the army that sailed for the Crimea and found it much the same as the one he had last commanded at Waterloo in 1815. Fortunately, the avoidable tragedies of the Crimean War could not be concealed from the British public and, after the Crimea, change clearly had to come, in spite of the stout resistance put up by the then Commander-in-Chief of the army, the Duke of Cambridge. The duke was a cousin of Queen Victoria and had commanded a division- with no particular distinction- in the Crimea. He became Commander-in-Chief after the campaign and was not finally levered out of that position until 1895, after more than forty years in the post- and at the age of seventy-two. While in office, the duke regarded army reform not simply as unwise but as a potential threat to the state.
Bolstered by Her Majesty's approval, the Duke of Cambridge fought change for the rest of his life, and his influence in curtailing progress should not be underestimated. The chief advocate of reform was his deputy, General Sir Garnet Wolseley, the Adjutant General of the army, but change would result only as a consequence of political pressure. That came from three Secretaries of State for War, Edward Cardwell (1868-74), his immediate successor Hugh Childers, and R. B. Haldane, later Lord Haldane, who was Secretary of State for War between 1905 and 1912 and founded the army- and the BEF- that marched off to France in 1914.
In the late nineteenth century Army reformers were faced with one crucial problem: how to change command and control of the Army, how to transform it, root and branch, from an eighteenth century relic into a twentieth-century fighting force without destroying the ethos that made the British Army such a wonderful and - when it reached the battlefield - such a powerful and courageous institution. The core of that problem was the regimental system.
The regimental system is not peculiar to the British Army but it is certainly arguable that nowhere else in the world is the notion of the regiment so deeply rooted in the Army and the nation at large. Essentially the regiment is a family; as in any family, members will make any sacrifice to preserve the lives of other members and not let the family as a whole down. The regiment transcends self. In the end- and whatever comforting illusions are cherished in Downing Street or Buckingham Palace- the British soldier does not fight for vague abstractions like 'Queen and Country'; he stands and fights- and dies if need be- because he cannot let his comrades and his regiment down. The soldiers at Mons and Le Cateau, the Aisne and the Marne, the gunners at Nery, that stubborn infantry who beat off the Prussian Guard at Messines and Ypres, were holding their ground because they were riflemen, fusiliers, guardsmen, gunners, Sherwood Foresters, Worcesters . . . men fighting for their comrades and their regiment. At that time and place only the regiment mattered because only the regiment was there; the regimental spirit was all they had to hang on to in that nightmare of noise and fear and death.
This ethos- regimental spirit or morale- takes time to build. It is founded on tradition, discipline, sound training and sensible handling in the field- plus that intangible notion of the 'regimental family', that barrack-home in which some families serve for generation after generation. Tinkering with the regimental family can be dangerous and difficult, but it had to be done and, fortunately, Cardwell and his successors handled the matter with considerable tact.
Cardwell struck first at 'purchase', the system by which commissioned ranks and promotion could be bought and traded between officers. For example, the Earl of Cardigan, notorious for his part in the Charge of the Light Brigade at Balaclava, purchased command of the 11th Hussars for the then considerable sum of £25,000 and regarded it as a good investment, which indeed it was.
The command added to Cardigan's social prestige, and when he led his regiment to destruction at Balaclava the British government replaced it. The snag was that purchase barred promotion to officers of ability but slender means, and it had to go. At the same time Cardwell removed another obstacle to progress, promotion by seniority, and replaced it with a system popularly known as 'get on or get out', by which an officer had to attain promotion after a certain period in one rank or leave the army. None of this endeared Cardwell to the officer corps, but it greatly improved the army by al1owing talent rise to the top.
Cardwell's next reform- the Army Enlistment Act, which introduced short service - was even more controversial. Previously a soldier had enlisted for twenty years, and this caused several problems. Recruiting was difficult as good men were unwilling to sign on for such a long time and were middle aged by the time they drew a pension, so the system did not produce a trained reserve. Cardwell therefore introduced a twelve-year term of service in which seven years would be spent with the Colours and five on the reserve. The benefits of this system, said Cardwell, were obvious -'in peace time the Army will feed the Reserve, in war the Reserve will feed the Army' - and he was right- more than 60 per cent of the soldiers in the 1914 BEF were recalled reservists.
Now came that really delicate matter, the regimental system. The very idea of tinkering with the old regiments - bringing in a territorially-based, linked-battalion system- caused uproar, and the matter was settled only under Childers in 1881, after Cardwell had left the War Office - and was never imposed on the aristocratic ranks of the cavalry. At the time most battalions had numbers and adopted names - the 3rd Foot, for example, were also known as 'The Buffs'. Now the old 'Buffs', who had held the line under Wellington's eye at Talavera during the Peninsular War and fought on a hundred dreadful fields, would become the twobattalion 'East Kent Regiment', which no one had ever heard of, and lose its proud position in the line. Locally recruited- in East Kent for this particular infantry regiment- one battalion would serve at the depot on garrison duties and in training recruits and the other would be on active service abroad. Periodically these roles would be reversed - and the regiment would also acquire a number of militia battalions of part-time volunteers.
It made good sense, but the old sweats hated it. Their regimental number was a source of pride and elan. Were not the 1st Foot, destined to become the Royal Scots, equally well known as 'Pontius Pilate's Bodyguard' from their long-standing position as the senior regiment of the line? Were they not therefore obviously superior to, say, the old 49th Foot? Perhaps so, but that obvious distinction would vanish when the 49th Foot became the Royal Berkshire Regiment or the 43rd and 52nd Foot combined to become the Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry. All this may not matter much in the first decade of the twenty-first century, but British soldiers at the end of the nineteenth century thought it mattered a great deal. They loved their regiments, and the rank and file fought this particular change every step of the way.
In fact, as the soldiers soon discovered, the change produced a substantial number of benefits. It improved recruiting, forged family links in the recruiting area and did wonders for the private soldier's reputation. That much despised 'Tommy Atkins' about whom Kipling wrote was now a cousin or a brother or a member of the family down the road. When the drums beat and the sound of the regimental march echoed through the streets of the county town, the local populace turned out to line the route and cheer the soldiers as the battalion marched to the station, bound for the troopship and some distant war. This was now their regiment; its exploits in the field were followed with attention and anxiety - and the crowds turned out to cheer again when the boys came marching home, or shed a tear or two for those that were missing.
There were other changes. The red coat finally went out- other than for ceremonial occasions- and in came khaki. In 1903, the artillery ordered the 18-pounder gun for the field artillery- which supports the infantry - and the 13-pounder gun for the Horse Artillery- which supports the cavalry. Both guns would be widely employed by the BEF in 1914. The Martini-Henry single-shot rifle was replaced by the Lee-Metford magazine rifle, which gave way to the long Lee-Enfield, which was in turn replaced by the Short Magazine Lee-Enfield, the accurate and much loved 'SMLE' which the BEF used to such effect at Mons and First Ypres and which stayed in service in the British Army until the end of the Second World War.
This was about the same size as the army of Serbia- and these 'divisions', either at home or abroad, were not actually in existence as formed units. The army was deployed in garrisons or separate battalions or, here and there, as on the North-West Frontier of India, in operational brigades. In 1914 the home establishment also contained fourteen divisions of Haldane's newly created Territorial Force, totalling some 300,000 men, but none of these part-time volunteers could be sent overseas unless they volunteered to go. Even when fully mustered, the British Army was small.
In comparison the French Army in 1914 could muster 1,071,000 men in five armies, (18) and the Germans had 850,000 men with the Colours and could mobilize a total of 4,300,000 trained men in twenty-five active army corps in a matter of days, (19) plus 55 reserve, Ersatz and Landwehr divisions, and no fewer than eleven cavalry divisions- all as a result of conscription. Even the small Belgian Army, of six divisions and a cavalry division, could muster 350,000 men, if all the garrison and fortress troops were included. (20)
The Old Contemptibles Page 4