Army opposition to a maritime strategy and civilian control

The British Way of War links resistance to an amphibious army role with a dispute over civilian direction. The Russo-Japanese War reduced concern about India's north-west frontier while the Moroccan crisis shifted attention toward Germany. George Sydenham Clarke and the Admiralty wanted troops previously reserved for India available for combined operations against Germany. Army leaders resisted joining a planning subcommittee that would place them in a subordinate amphibious role. The book interprets that refusal as a challenge to civilian authority. Advocates of a continental strategy instead promoted a much larger conscript army, conflicting with a maritime approach that treated mass armies as ill suited to imperial commitments and constitutionally dangerous.