was decided to end his volume at May 1915 and only cover France. Edmonds also came to doubt the quality of the work, judging Fortescue to be ignorant of the workings of a contemporary army, apparently being behind the times; Fortescue had excluded dates and times and used obsolete language; he agreed to revise his draft but then took no notice. His second draft was said to be confused, containing nothing about the general situation and hardly referring to the Germans. Senior officers were ridiculed, the government blamed for not stopping the war and the French effort was "slurred over in less than one typewritten page". Edmonds blamed Fortescue for lack of interest, lethargy and ignoring the records made available, bungling the chance to write an exciting story of the BEF by delivering a patchwork of unit diaries. At the end of the year, Edmonds decided to rewrite the work; Fortescue was sacked and Edmonds even wanted him to be made to pay back his salary. Edmonds decided that an account must be enhanced by statements, private records of officers and by German material, to counter "garbled" accounts by the likes of Arthur Conan Doyle and John Buchan. Soundings with publishers and authors convinced Edmonds that a work based on dispatches would fail to engage the public. An educational work needed a foundation on which to base teaching and a work must be readable enough for the public to buy, be a credible educational work for the military student and rebut inaccurate commercial accounts by civilian authors. Edmonds submitted an annual report and meetings considered costs and the progress of publication, the number of volumes, their scope and size. On rare occasions the committee made a ruling on content after complaints by a department; in 1928, the War Office strenuously objected to some of the content of the first Gallipoli volume by C. F. Aspinall-Oglander. Money determined the speed of publication, the size and number of volumes and the choice of author. Edmonds preferring to employ officers on half-pay or retired on £500 per year, about half the price of a civilian author; officers were usually willing to work longer hours and do unpaid work. The Treasury managed to obtain the removal of Lieutenant-General Launcelot Kiggell, Chief of the General Staff of the British Armies in France from late 1915 to early 1918 from writing 1918 Part I and Edmonds