when Joseph Chamberlain and Devonshire resigned over the former's plans for Tariff Reform. Esher Committee In 1904 Esher set up a sub-committee of Committee for Imperial Defence, known as the Esher Committee of which he was appointed chairman. To achieve the King's desired reforms of the Army, Esher formed an uneasy alliance with Sir George Clarke, the permanent secretary, to directly undermine H O Arnold-Foster's attempt to block militia reform, Clarke "discountenancing" told him he could not possibly read the Order". The sub-committee was a triumvirate of Esher, Rosebery, and General Murray, notorious for making policy on the hoof misusing ministerial offices. Furious Esher was determined the King should have intervention: on 7 December, Arnold-Foster advised to save £2m the militia must be absorbed into the Army. His scheming encouraged by the King, wanted prime minister Balfour to look to party first, while at the same time warning the King's Secretary that "the Prime Minister will have to take matters into his own hands". Esher's role was for sixty-seven years a secret, by a memorandum behind the scenes, unaccountable to parliament. It was decided on 19 December a Reserve Force should be set up "in commission". On 12 January Esher told the minister to accept his sub-committee's recommendation, even though Arnold-Foster had not even been told of the agenda. Despite the intrigues, the King approved of the committee's work. Esher cultivated a friendship with Colonel Sir Edmund Ward, secretary to the Army Council in order to control minute-taking, the agenda, and meetings quorum telling him he had secret information of "proof of the Army Order"; and a plan known as "Traverse" towards Army decentralisation. That was in September 1904 when the Army Council's powers were still undefined at the time it was enlarged by Lord Knollys. The issue confronting Esher was the Royal Prerogative which had been circumvented "without reference to the Sovereign". He marched into Arnold-Foster's office to remind him that precedent under Victoria had been to yield to arguments from the monarch which had already been put forward by the Adjutant-General. Liberal War Office Behind the scenes, he influenced many pre-First World War military reforms and was a supporter of the British–French Entente Cordiale. He chaired the War Office Reconstitution Committee. This recommended radical reform of the British Army, including the setting up of the Army Council, and established the Committee of Imperial Defence, a permanent secretariat that