When Edward Hutton returned from New South Wales to London on 16 April 1896 he was riding on the crest of a wave of perceived success in the colony and wasted no time calling on key figures at the War Office and various Colonial Office officials, including Joseph Chamberlain. Hutton was thrilled to be received privately by the Duke of Cambridge a week after his return. ‘Nothing could have exceeded the cordiality and kindness which I everywhere received’, he later reminisced, ‘and the congratulations which were conveyed to me, by all officials concerned with military and imperial interest, were gratifying in the extreme.’ Hutton later claimed that it was suggested to him that he might be promoted major-general for his services, but he declined as it would have passed him over the heads of his seniors and he did not relish the jealousy and ‘professional unpleasantness’ which would result. Be that as it may, such official recognition fired Hutton's imagination, reaffirmed his self-belief and stoked his ambition to greater heights than ever before. With more time on his hands than had been available in New South Wales, Hutton was also free to devote his considerable intellectual energy to his emerging ideas concerning imperial defence.

Hutton spent much of his time immediately after his return to Britain seeking the company and counsel of the members of the CDC. He was aware that the committee was at that point on the cusp of moving beyond its restrictive traditional focus on local colonial defence issues towards the consideration of the wider issue of defending the Empire. How best to do so was a subject that at once held Hutton's attention and one he hoped to influence. He helped Captain Nathan, for example, prepare in May 1896 the first CDC memorandum ever drafted that gave a solid set of principles behind its conception of imperial defence. The memo was itself a consequence of a Colonial Office request to prepare a paper that could be used to ‘educate colonial public opinion in the right principles of defence’.