His mother wrote to him: You know you are the Great Hope of the Family...if you do not like Service you can do something else...there are plenty of things Steady Young Men can do when they can write and read as you can...(the Army) is a refuge for all idle people...I shall name it to no one for I am ashamed to think of it...I would rather bury you than see you in a red coat.

[22] There he became a protégé of Sir Henry Brackenbury, the new Military Member of the Viceroy's Council (equivalent to War Minister for India), who was keen to beef up the intelligence branch of the Indian army, including mapping the Northwest Frontier.

[23] In June 1894 he undertook a three-month journey via Gilgit and mountainous north Kashmir, crossing the Darkot Pass at over 4,700 metres (15,430 ft) to reach the Pamirs Plateau at the foot of the Himalayas, returning to India in August by a westerly route via Chilas and Khagan.

Unlike most applicants, he could not afford to take extended leave from his job to attend a crammer, and had he failed he would have been too old to apply again, so he rose between 4 and 5 am each day to study mathematics, German, and French with the assistance of his wife.

[2][18][29] Under George Henderson he absorbed the principles, derived from Jomini, Clausewitz, and Edward Hamley's Operations of War (1866), of concentration of physical and moral force and the destruction of the main enemy army.

[62] After Hubert Gough and other officers had threatened to resign in the Curragh incident, Robertson also supported Wilson in trying in vain to persuade French (CIGS) to warn the government that the Army would not move against Ulster.

[67] Robertson, who on 13 September was promoted to temporary lieutenant general,[68] "felt deeply" the loss of his close friend Colonel Freddy Kerr, who was killed by a shell while serving as chief of staff to 2nd Division.

[77] He advised on 25 June 1915 against retreat to the Channel Ports, an option contemplated by the Cabinet after the defensive losses at Second Ypres, arguing that it would leave the British "helpless spectators" in France's defeat.

[82] Robertson initially opposed the mooted Loos offensive, recommending a more limited attack by Second Army to seize Messines-Wyndeschete ridge, and telling Sidney Clive it would be "throwing away thousands of lives in knocking our heads against a brick wall".

He scorned the idea that it would bring Greece into the war on the Allied side, and at a late March 1916 conference argued with Briand (French Prime Minister) and Joffre, who thumped the table and shouted that Robertson was "un homme terrible".

It would only be a move to (rescue) the French", although he was probably not aware of Haig's insistence, overruling Rawlinson's earlier plan, on bombarding deeper into the German defences in the hope of breaking through and "fighting the enemy in the open".

[107] Robertson lobbied hard but in vain to prevent Lloyd George, who made no secret of his desire to use his control over military appointments to influence strategy, from succeeding Kitchener as Secretary of State for War.

Robertson issued a strong rebuttal the same day, arguing that Britain's losses were small compared to what France had suffered in previous years, that Germany had had to quadruple the number of her divisions on the Somme sector and that this had taken pressure off Verdun and contributed to the success of Russian and Italian offensives.

[116] With Allied offensives apparently making progress on all fronts in August, Robertson hoped that Germany might sue for peace at any time and urged the government to pay more attention to drawing up war aims, lest Britain get a raw deal in the face of collusion between France and Russia.

He wanted Germany preserved as a major power as a block to Russian influence, possibly gaining Austria to compensate for the loss of her colonies, Alsace-Lorraine and her North Sea and Baltic ports.

[118] Robertson had told Monro, the new Commander-in-Chief India, to "keep up a good show" (1 August 1916) in Mesopotamia but wanted to retreat from Kut to Amara rather than make any further attempt to take Baghdad; this was overruled by Curzon and Chamberlain.

[133][134] At the Rome Conference (5–6 January 1917) Lloyd George, advised by Hankey, proposed sending heavy guns to Italy with a view to defeating Austria-Hungary, possibly to be balanced by a transfer of Italian troops to Salonika.

The next morning, after Nivelle had claimed he had not personally drawn up the scheme, Robertson "ramped up and down the room, talking about the horrible idea of putting 'the wonderful army' under a Frenchman, swearing he would never serve under one".

[148] A January 1917 paper, probably drafted by Macdonogh, argued that, with a compromise peace leaving Germany in control of the Balkans increasingly likely, Britain should protect her Empire by capturing Aleppo, which would make Turkey's hold on Palestine and Mesopotamia untenable.

This coincided with the failure of the Nivelle Offensive, reports of unrest among Russian troops after the February Revolution and an escalation of the U-Boat War causing Robertson to prefer a return to a defensive policy in the Middle East.

Haig also showed Robertson his "Present Situation and Future Plans" (dated 12 June) in which he argued that he had a good chance of clearing the Belgian Coast and that victory at Ypres "might quite possibly lead to (German) collapse".

[161] After the Inter-Allied conference in London (6–8 August 1917), at which Lloyd George had urged the creation of a common Allied General Staff, Robertson again joined with Foch in claiming that there was not time to send heavy guns to Italy for a September offensive.

[169] On 26 September Lloyd George and Robertson met Haig to discuss the recent German peace feelers, one of which suggested she might give up her colonies, Belgium, Serbia and Alsace-Lorraine in return for keeping Poland and the Baltic States.

[170] On his return Robertson wrote Haig an equivocal letter (27 September) stating that he stuck to his advice to concentrate effort on the Western Front rather than Palestine out of instinct and lack of any alternative than from any convincing argument.

By the end of the year the Cabinet Committee on Manpower were hearing about an alarming rise in drunkenness, desertions and psychological disorders in the BEF, and reports of soldiers' returning from the front grumbling about "the waste of life" at Ypres.

[174] In his 8 October paper, Haig claimed that since 1 April 1917, 135 of the 147 German divisions on the Western Front had been driven from their positions or withdrawn after suffering losses, several of them two or three times, and argued that the Allies could beat Germany in 1918 even if Russia were to make peace.

Robertson went to Italy to supervise deployment of British divisions, meeting Lloyd George, Hankey and Wilson when they arrived for the Rapallo Conference (6–7 November), which formally established the Supreme War Council.

Robertson wrote to him on 4 May, writing that not too much credence should be given to imminent predictions of Lloyd George's downfall, that Maurice should take especial care to get his facts exactly right, and adding: "You are contemplating a great thing – to your undying credit".

In October the CIGS Henry Wilson warned Churchill that the planned introduction of Irish Home Rule would lead to unrest, and asked him to consult the Prime Minister, perhaps in the knowledge that Lloyd George disliked Robertson.

[221] On returning to the UK, Robertson received no official welcome at Victoria Station and later recorded that "having secured a broken-down taxi I drove to my residence in Eccleston Square; and thereupon joined the long list of unemployed officers on half-pay".