(25) Every proven military incompetent has previously…

“steam-tactics saga illustrates that (4) Rationalism, unlike empiricism, tends to assume an accretion of vested interests.”

— Gilbert Andrew Hugh Gordon

“(24) Properly disseminated doctrine offers both the cheapest and the most secure command-and-control method yet devised by man.”

— Gilbert Andrew Hugh Gordon

“(21) Heavy signalling, like copious orders, is symptomatic of doctrinal deficiency,”

— Gilbert Andrew Hugh Gordon

“Signals’ prioritising mechanisms become dislocated in times of overload.”

— Gilbert Andrew Hugh Gordon

“(19) Signalling promotes the centralisation of authority.”

— Gilbert Andrew Hugh Gordon

“My comments are directed at the system which was responsible for their poor performance, not at the officers concerned. I do not recall ever…

— Gilbert Andrew Hugh Gordon

“Some of them are blinding glimpses of the obvious (BGOs), several overlap, and I make no claims of discovery. The fundamental proposition – and…

— Gilbert Andrew Hugh Gordon

“can therefore attribute the many reporting failures at Jutland to a cocktail of factors, including: (a) lack of initiative, and ‘seniority knows best’; (b)…

— Gilbert Andrew Hugh Gordon

“By the close of the Victorian age Britain’s officer classes were increasingly the inheritors, rather than the winners, of empire.”

— Gilbert Andrew Hugh Gordon

“that (11) Purveyors of technical systems will seek to define performance criteria and trials conditions.”

— Gilbert Andrew Hugh Gordon

“(20) There is an inverse law between robust doctrine and the need for signalling.”

— Gilbert Andrew Hugh Gordon

“The literal meaning of ‘doctrine’ is “what is taught within a group as its corporate beliefs, principles or faith”52 – although “what is learnt…

— Gilbert Andrew Hugh Gordon

“Many of the more ghastly and idiotic aspects of the Great War were made possible by the coincidence of mass-production and the social religion…

— Gilbert Andrew Hugh Gordon

“The one lesson to be learned is the necessity for every officer to cultivate belief in his own judgment, so as not to be…

— Gilbert Andrew Hugh Gordon

“(10) Innovations adopted in accordance with peacetime doctrine, may lock the Fleet into both systems and doctrine which will fail the empirical test of…

— Gilbert Andrew Hugh Gordon