The Report of Lord Hartington's Commission, which appeared in the spring of 1890, seemed to justify the apprehension which had caused me to write, for it recommended the creation, under the name of a general staff, of a department bearing little resemblance to the model which it professed to copy. The Commission, however, was in a most awkward dilemma. It was confronted in regard to the command of the army with two problems, one of which was administrative, the other constitutional. The public was anxious to have an army efficient for its purpose of fighting the enemies of Great Britain. The statesmen on the Commission were intent upon having an army obedient to the Government. The tradition that the command of the army being a royal prerogative could be exercised otherwise than through the constituted advisers of the Crown was not in practice altogether extinct. It can hardly be doubted that the Commission was right in wishing to establish the principle that the army is a branch of the public service, administered and governed under the authority of the Cabinet in precisely the same way as the post office. No other theory is possible in the England of our day. But the attempt to make the theory into the practice touched certain susceptibilities which it was felt ought to be respected, and the Commission perhaps attached more importance to this kind of consideration than to the necessity of preparing the war office for war. It was no doubt of the first importance to guard against the recurrence of a state of things in which all attempts to bring the army into harmony with the needs of the time and of the nation were frustrated by an authority not entirely amenable to the control of the Secretary of State. Not less important, however, was the requirement that any change by which this result, in itself so desirable, might be attained should at the same time contribute to the supreme end of readiness for conflict with any of the Great Powers whose rivalry with Great Britain has in recent times become so acute. In the war of which a part is examined in the following pages a chief of the staff is seen drafting the orders by which the whole army is guided. He has no authority; the orders are issued in the name of the commander,--that is in Prussia, of the king. When, as was the case in 1866 and in 1870-1, the king shows his entire confidence in the chief of the staff by invariably accepting his drafts, the direction of the army, the generalship of the campaign, is really the work of the chief of the staff, though that officer has never had a command, and has been sheltered throughout under the authority of another. The generalship or strategy of the campaigns of 1866 and 1870-1 was Moltke's, and Moltke's alone, and no one has borne more explicit testimony to this fact than the king. At the same time no one has more emphasized the other fact, that he was covered by the king's responsibility, than Moltke himself.