Committee of Imperial Defence

Many such sub-committees were engendered over the decades, on topics such as foreign espionage (a committee report in 1909 led to the founding of MI5 and MI6), food rationing, and aerial defence.

In addition to acting as a communicator, Clarke was tasked with making sure that the policies agreed to by the committee were implemented.

With the fall of the Balfour Government in December 1905, and with the military services determined to control their own futures, these plans fell through, and with no support from the incoming Prime Minister, he resigned in 1907.

By 1914, the Committee had begun to act as a defence planning agency for the whole British Empire, consequently providing advice to the Dominions on occasion.

It was effectively a peacetime defence planning system, one which only provided advice; formal authority remained with Ministers and service chiefs, which helped ensure the Committee's acceptability to the existing bureaucracy.