During the second Baldwin administration, Hankey remained a leading military adviser, whose counsel was nearly always sought albeit not in all cases heeded. Nor did Hankey shy from obtruding that advice where he thought the national interest at stake. Generally he maneuvered with his fabled tact, as we shall see in our conspectus of Hankey's activities: Hankey had himself become an institution, above and beyond the Cabinet Secretariat. As his contemporaries could not separate the twin institutions, some account of his personal involvement is needed to supplement consideration of his secretarial labors. While Hankey as Cabinet Secretary influenced ministers who were now, by and large, far less experienced in affairs of state than he, his own institutional strength derived from his position as Secretary to the Committee of Imperial Defence, which co-ordinated the defence arrangements of the United Kingdom and the British Empire. We need recall Hankey's own assertion, dating to 1927: ‘I do in fact give more time to the affairs of the C.I.D. than to the Cabinet,’ an allocation of time and effort which he preferred. Hankey's involvement with the CID stemmed at least in part from the lessened scale of Cabinet activity in Baldwin's regime; since Hankey continued to take Cabinet Minutes unless otherwise occupied, he had more time for other concerns than had been the case during the Lloyd George coalition.