IMPERIAL GENERAL STAFF.

Auckland Star, Volume LI, Issue 36, 11 February 1920, Page 7

IMPERIAL GENERAL STAFF.

(From Our Special Correspondent.) LONDON, November ?4. At a meeting of the Army Committe*e of the House of Commons on November 13, a resolution was parsed on the motion of Sir John Davidson, declaring that: "In view of the development of the military organisation of the Empire, consequent on the war, the organisation of the Imperial General Staff requires a corresponding development to enable it to fulfil its fundamental and primary role as an advisory body on problems of Imperial defence." It was also suggested that this development should be on the principles approved by the representatives of the Overseas Dominions at the Imperial Conference in 1007, and outlined in the General Staff Paper of 1909, signed by Sir W. Nicholson, that the Imperial General Staff should lie organised in ono central body with local branches for each part of the Empire. Removed from the War Oflice, and definitely freed from responsibility for administrative details, this central body should advise the Imperial Council on problems of defence, and guide the local branches of the Imperial General ,'**taff| on all questions of military principles. | Later, the central body might advise i the Imperial Council on all problems of Imperial defence, for all parts of the Empire, and in relation to sea and air as well as land, due regard being had to the safeguarding of the necessary Parliamentary control. The Committee rely on Mr. Churchill's statement in support of a joint staff representative of all three services as the justification of the present declaration.