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
British home army in the First World War empire. Accordingly, the War Office recommended in March 1919 that the force should be liable for service overseas, a condition of service that territorial representatives recognised as necessary. It was officially reconstituted in 1921 by the Territorial Army and Militia Act 1921 and renamed in October as the Territorial Army. The same legislation resurrected the militia as a replacement for the Special Reserve. The latter was only some 9,000 strong when a committee chaired by General Alexander Hamilton-Gordon recommended in July 1919 that it should be abolished, and it effectively ceased to exist by the end of the year. Having