Abstract
Strategic policy sprang from politics. It was made on the margins of power and responsibility of several elements of the government. The Cabinet defined the priorities between the government’s aims and approved policies for each department. The latter executed these policies, which regulated their claims on government resources. The relationship between ministers and departments was dynamic and all of their decisions were inter-related. Two independent factors determined the evolution of strategic policy. One was the random evolution of politics and the other was the constant process of bureaucracy.
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1 The Politics of Strategic Policy, 1919–26
Gordon Craig, ‘The British Foreign Office from Grey to Austen Chamberlain’ in Gordon Craig and Felix Gilbert (eds), The Diplomats 1919–1939 (1953) pp. 15–33;
A.J. Sharp, ‘The Foreign Office in Eclipse, 1919–22’, History, vol. 61 (1976);
Anne Orde, Great Britain and International Security, 1920–1926 (1978) pp. 4–5.
For more accurate reappraisals of this issue, see Christopher Thorne, The Limits of Foreign Policy, The West, The League and the Far Eastern Crisis of 1931–33 (1972) p. 97;
R.M. Warman, ‘The Erosion of Foreign Office Influence in the Making of Foreign Policy, 1916–1918’, Historical Journal, vol. 15 (1973)
and M.L. Dockrill and Zara Steiner, ‘The Foreign Office at the Paris Peace Conference of 1919’, International History Review, Vol. 2 (1980).
Lord Ronaldshay, The Life of Lord Curzon, Volume III (1928) pp. 259–61; Crowe to Hardinge, 8 November 1919, FO 800/243; Hardinge to Queen Mary, 20 March 1920, Hardinge of Penshurst papers, vol. 40; Vansittart to Curzon, 20 March 1921, Curzon of Kedleston papers, F.112, vol. 221 B.
This view is held even by G.C. Peden’s revisionist British Rearmament and the Treasury (1979) pp. 7–8. Fisher, 29 December 1923. T 161/217 S. 21914.
Viscount Templewood, Empire of the Air (1957) pp. 41–2;
H. Montgomery Hyde, British Air Policy Between the Wars, 1918–1939 (1976) pp. 57, 113–14.
Andrew Boyle, Trenchard, Man of Vision (1962) pp. 336, 348–50, passim.
Roskill, Naval Policy p. 243; Robert Rhodes James (ed.), Memoirs of a Conservative, J.C.C. Davidson’s Memoirs and Papers, 1910–1937 (1969) pp. 220–23.
Lord Riddell, Intimate Diary of the Peace Conference and After (1933) pp. 139–40.
W.S. Chalmers, The Life and Letters of David Beatty, Admiral of the Fleet (1951) p. 411; 133rd CID meeting, 29 June 1920, CAB 2/3; 214th CID meeting, 10 June 1926, CAB 2/4; Trenchard to Geddes, 11 November 1921, AIR 8/42; report of Geddes Committee, December 1921, AIR 8/41.
Stephen Roskill, Hankey, Man of Secrets, Volume 11, 1919–1931 (1972) passim.
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© 1989 John Robert Ferris
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Ferris, J.R. (1989). The Politics of Strategic Policy, 1919–26. In: The Evolution of British Strategic Policy, 1919–26. Studies in Military and Strategic History. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-09739-5_1
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