On my return I found the first proofs of your three papers. I have studied them with close care and interest. There are some points of detail which puzzle me, but it seems you are absolutely convincing on the main lines. What I venture to emphasise is this:--We cannot reform the Army Administration until it is laid down what it is the Administration is going to Administer! For instance, the Citizen Army for Home Defence! Are we going to have it? If so, then you will certainly want a Member of the Board or Council to superintend it! Again, I say, the _Regular Army_ (as distinguished from the Home Army and the _Indian Army_) should be regarded as a projectile to be fired by the Navy! The Navy embarks it and lands it where it can do most mischief!--Thus, the Germans are ready to land a large Military Force on the Cotentin Peninsula in case of War with France and my German Military Colleague at the Hague Conference told me this comparatively small Military Force would have the effect of demobilising half a million of men who would thus be taken away from the German Frontier--they never know where the devil the brutes are going to land! Consequently instead of our Military Manœuvres being on Salisbury Plain and its vicinity (ineffectually aping the vast Continental Armies!) we should be employing ourselves in joint Naval and Military Manœuvres embarking 50,000 men at Portsmouth and landing them at Milford Haven or Bantry Bay!--This would make the Foreigners sit up! Fancy! in the Mediterranean Fleet we disembarked 12,000 men with guns in _19 minutes_! What do you think of that! and we should hurry up the soldiers! No doubt there would be good-natured chaff! Once we embarked 7,000 soldiers at Malta and took them round and landed them elsewhere for practice, and I remember having a complaint that the Bluejackets said “Come on, you bloody lobsters! Wake up!” However all the above _en passant_. I expect the Prime Minister must have pretty good ideas now crystallised as to how the Army should be constituted--let us ask him for this at once--if he hasn’t got it, let us tell him we must have it, because as I said at starting, you can’t organise an administration without clearly knowing what you are going to administer. This is a hasty bit of writing but not a hasty thought. * * * * * 1903. _Nov. 25th._