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Its members were the deputies of their respective Chiefs of Staff both in their individual and in their collective ("High Command") capacities. It had powers of initiation in discussing and elaborating plans for submission to the two High Commands (and through the latter to the Supreme War Council) and the duty of discussing and preparing, if possible, an agreed plan ated by one or other High Command, by both jointly or by the Supreme. War Council.

In practice this body, which should have been the permanent core of the Allied military effort, failed to function as effectively as it should have done. The reasons were, among others: differences in the structure of the two High Commands; the physical factor of distance between one team and its High Command; an insufficiently close linking of the British team with other parts of the Chiefs of Staff organisation; and the vagaries of French methods and persons.

The heads of the French Military Missions in London were also the representatives of their respective Services on the Allied Military Committee. Although this arrangement might in theory appear as ideal for purposes of close co-ordination, it is doubtful in practice whether one individual can at the same time conduct day-to-day

administrative business and enter into imaginative discussions and detached planning in the true sense. At all events they failed to do su.

The chief British Military Missions in France, administrative or operational in varying degrees, were:

No. 1 (Howard-Vyse) Army to C.in C. French land forces; No. 2 (Swayne) Army to C.in C. North Eastern Armies.

In addition there were numerous liaison detachments and officers, between services or branches (Admiralty to Ministry of Mariné, military intelligence to 2nd bureau, etc.) and between army commands (French C.in C. North Eastern Armies to B.E.F., etc.)

The Economic Collaboration structure was just beginning to come into its stride at the time of the collapse. The various Executive Committees, to the list of which additions were constantly being made, were finding their feet and carrying out their respective missions smoothly, without constant reference of deadlocks or difficulties to the Co-rdinating Committee, which was thus left free to consider major issues of policy, questions of priorities as between the Executives, and new undertakings such as the work of the Anglo-French Purchasing Mission in the United States, which loomed larger and larger throughout the first half of 1940.

Section C

GENERAL COMMENT.

The one lesson that stands out sharply from the history of Anglo-French war collaboration in 1939-1940 is that since the Allied headquarters must necessarily be in one or other of the two capitals there must unavoidably be a home team and a visiting team. flence the partners, however closely they work together, cannot be quite on the same footing, at any rate psychologically. The only way of overcoming that disparity is to mould the structure of the visiting team as closely as possible to that of the home team, which, for good or ill, cannot be substantially altered to suit the purposes of Allied collaboration.

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