lement various measures throughout the war. However, it still remained "clear that two major faults existed at the highest levels of army administration - the want of an adequate professional consultative agency and the failure of communication between soldiers and politicians. Without greater co-ordination strategy and diplomacy could never be linked."
             Following the war, a committee was created to consider potential reforms in the British Army. The Report of the War Office (Reconstitution) Committee was chaired by Reginald Balliot Brett, the second Viscount Esher. Its other members included Admiral Sir John Fisher and Colonel Sir George Clarke. Part one of the Esher Report was published on 1 February 1904 and recommended three extensive reforms to the War Office. First "the traditional military hierarchy would be replaced by a General Staff." The General Staff would act as an advisory board and its responsibilities would be shared by a Director of Military Training, a Director of Staff Duties and a Director of Military Operations. This organization would finally provide the Secretary of State for War with "a responsible source of professional advice to guide him in the creation of defense policy rather then the hit-or-miss method of asking whomsoever he pleased, as had tended to be the case hitherto. " The second recommendation of the Esher Report was that the Office of the Commander-in-Chief be abolished and replaced by a Chief of the General Staff (CGS) as the senior military appointment. The South African War had highlighted the neccessity of limiting the alarming degree of influence that was normally retained by the C.-in-C. The responsibility for the Army would no longer be the purview of one office, but rather, policy and administration was to be vested in an Army Council, the third of Esher's recommended reforms. The creation of an Army Council was an initiative that had already been in...