Why Britain's 1916 mass army could not yet exploit initiative

The British Army did not arrive at the Somme ignorant of fire and movement. The method had been drilled into the pre-war regular army and used effectively in 1914. Corrigan's distinction is that the force attacking in 1916 was a much larger and less experienced army fighting its first major battle. Attempting dispersed fire and movement without enough practiced leaders and soldiers risked breaking unit control and increasing casualties. He similarly rejects an ethnic explanation in which French soldiers possessed initiative and British soldiers did not. Initiative depends on experience from which a soldier can judge when deviation is useful, and the necessary base had not yet spread through the expanded army.