Although prewar staff talks had settled to the last detail the transport of the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) to France – train timetables, food rations, concentration areas – no attempt had been made to define the command relationship between the British and French armies. This was not surprising since the British had been trying to avoid an offensive alliance (and the Germans and Austrians had failed also to coordinate their strategic planning). Nonetheless, one authority calls the failure to regulate command relations to be the ‘great flaw in prewar staff talks’. After a brief account of the prewar decade, this chapter will consider the mechanism of command at the highest level, in both military and political spheres. It will examine the command relationship on the Western Front and also in Paris and London. The dominant themes are the absence of a command mechanism in 1914, and the French attempts (by Joffre in particular) to impose control in the face of British resistance.

From Entente to coalition

The Entente cordiale began life in 1904 merely as a settlement of extra-European colonial conflicts. It allowed differences to be settled over spheres of influence within Africa: French recognition of the British position in Egypt was balanced by British recognition of French supremacy in Morocco, a balance brought about by the building of a German fleet to ensure ‘a place in the sun’ for the German Reich. Other long-running disputes in further colonial possessions were also settled.