Hill, and in the operations in the Transvaal, east of Pretoria, during the latter half of 1900. In the South African honours list published in April 1901, he was promoted to the substative rank of major-general for distinguished service in the field, dated 23 December 1899 (the date he was granted that rank locally in South Africa). Nicholson returned to London in late December 1900, was appointed Director-General of Mobilisation and Military Intelligence at Headquarters on 1 May 1901 and was promoted to lieutenant general on 4 November 1901. Nicholson was made a Knight of Grace of the Venerable Order of Saint John on 5 March 1903 and made Chief Military Attaché to the Imperial Japanese Army in Manchuria in 1904 during the Russo-Japanese War. He was appointed Quartermaster-General to the Forces and Member of the Army Council on 18 December 1905 earning promotion to general on 23 October 1906. Chief of the General Staff He was appointed as Chief of the General Staff on 2 April 1908, and, having been advanced to a Knight Grand Cross of the Order of the Bath in the King's Birthday Honours 1908, found his role re-designated Chief of the Imperial General Staff (CIGS) on 22 November 1909. He was appointed Aide-de-Camp General to the King on 1 July 1910. In July 1910 he took part in the funeral procession following the death of King Edward VII. As CIGS Nicholson was closely involved in the reorganisation of the British Army, consolidating the Territorial Force and the creation of a modern general staff. He was promoted to field marshal on 19 June 1911. Nicholson had a sharp tongue and one occasion Admiral Fisher asked Maurice Hankey to stop "Old Nick" "stamping his hoof on his toes". At the Committee of Imperial Defence meeting after the Agadir Crisis the First Sea Lord Admiral Arthur Wilson said that in the event of war the Navy planned to land the Army on the Baltic Coast. Nicholson asked Wilson whether the Admiralty had maps of German strategic railways (to show how the Germans could rush reinforcements to invasion spots), and when Wilson said it was not the Admiralty's business to have such maps, Nicholson openly rebuked him and said that if the Navy "meddled" in military matters they needed not just to have such maps but to have studied them. Prime Minister H.H. Asquith ordered the Navy to fall