Army Council (1904) practice, however, a huge amount of influence was retained by the exceedingly conservative C-in-C Field Marshal Prince George, 2nd Duke of Cambridge, who held the post between 1856–1895. His resistance to reform caused military efficiency to lag well behind Britain's rivals, a problem which became painfully obvious during the Second Boer War. The situation was only remedied in 1904 when the post of Commander-in-Chief was abolished and replaced with that of the Chief of the General Staff. An Army Council was created along similar lines to the Board of Admiralty, chaired by the Secretary of State for War, and an
History of the British Army across the Empire. It was unfortunate that certain of the officers who rose to high rank and positions of influence within the army during the 1930s were comparatively backward-looking. This meant that trials such as the Experimental Mechanized Force of 1927–28 did not go as far as they might have. One of the first post-war campaigns that the Army took part in was the Allied intervention in Russia in 1919 to assist the "White Army" against the Communist Bolsheviks during their Civil War. The British Army was also maintaining occupation forces in the defeated powers of World War I. In