This will be Chris Baker’s seventh annual lecture. It has become fashionable for historians to state that the British Expeditionary Force experienced a learning curve in going from the small colonial police force of 1914 to the huge mechanised army of 1918, and inflicting ultimate defeat on the German Army. But it came at a huge price in terms of deaths and shattered lives. Despite thirty years or more of academic denunciation of the “lions led by donkeys” school of thought, many still believe that the price was too high and that blunders were made. In this talk, Chris examines what the army learned and questions whether it could all have been done more quickly and with less costly experimentation.