THE OFFICERS of the Admiralty War Staff (Naval Staff from May 1917) have received a bad press, despite some praise for their work at the end of the war. In particular, the Naval Staff has been the victim of an unholy trinity of service critics. Kenworthy quoted, and approved, of the following view of those who served at the Admiralty (including those on the Staff): ‘The Admiralty breeds mediocre men and the mediocre man surrounds himself with mediocre men. Like calls to like with penguin gravity.’ Dewar wrote, in what was the theme of his memoirs, that, ‘our system of training had not produced the right type of man and that we lacked the intellectual capital to float an efficient staff’. For Richmond, the Admiralty was full of ‘cabbageheaded people’ and ‘nonentities’, among whom he included Jellicoe. Most secondary sources take a similar view. Of two books directly on the Admiralty itself, one commented, ‘Most of the Staff Officers had been selected as too sick or incompetent to be sent to sea.’ Generally Richmond, the Dewars and their friends had very little positive to say about their time at the Admiralty. The following could be said to be a fair summation of the view found in most secondary works: ‘The Staff was … merely a nondescript collection of officers. Many of them were retired officers who had been recalled in the war and who were as ignorant of the principles of staff work as they were of strategy and operations.’