MUNITIONS
“Like a rickety, clumsy machine, with a pin loose here, and a
tooth broken there, and a makeshift somewhere else, in which the
force of Hercules may be exhausted in a needless friction, and
obscure hitches before the hands are got to move, so is our
Executive, with the Treasury, the Horse Guards, the War
Department, the Medical Department, all out of gear, but all
required to move together before a result can be obtained. He
will be stronger than Hercules who can get out of it the
movement we require”—Colonel Lefroy’s letter to Miss Florence
Nightingale, Sir Edward Cook’s _Life of Miss Florence
Nightingale_, vol. i. pp. 322-3.
FROM the early days of the war Mr. Lloyd George had perceived that there
were two great difficulties ahead of us—men and the arming of men—and
that perhaps the greater of the two was the arming.[79] For the first
year, at any rate, the question of men seemed to present little
difficulty. England’s manhood came flocking to the banner of Lord
Kitchener. The great multitudes of free citizens who freely poured into
the recruiting offices after the retreat from Mons, will always be one
of the most splendid episodes in our history. The patience and
valour—the good-humour and endurance—of those first armies of
“Kitcheners” will always add an imperishable glory to the name of him
who summoned them.
So far, indeed, “nought shall make us rue.” England rested true to
herself and her great cause.
But it was not enough to gather the legions. It was necessary also to
arm them. Here it soon became clear that we were up against a new
portent. The stupendous war equipment of the German armies, both in guns
and in munitions, has since become a commonplace; at that time it was a
wonder and a surprise. The War Office went into the war still thinking
in terms of the Boer War, when machine-guns were a new miracle and
shrapnel was the last word in shells. They found themselves faced with
an army in which machine-guns had become a multitudinous commonplace and
shrapnel was already the humble servant of the high-explosive shell.
This was clearly, from the first, a struggle of machinery. It was not an
old-fashioned war. It was a war monstrously new—a fight against a
people immensely modern and scientific, as high in skill as they were
low in ruth, armed cap-à-pie with every device of destruction, sharpened
to the finest edge on the whetstone of prepared war.
All this has since become a commonplace; it is Mr. Lloyd George’s
distinction that he perceived it clearly in the autumn of 1914. Then in
the Cabinet he already insisted on the need for increased armaments. He
preached in season and out of season the need for guns; and in the
autumn of 1914 the Cabinet Committee, of which he was a member, forced
the War Office to order 4,000 guns instead of 600 for the following year
(1915).
But as the weeks passed a situation began to arise which threw even this
provision into the shade of inadequacy. It became clear that we had to
help in the munitioning of our Allies. There was France—early in the
war she lost her richest industrial districts. With splendid promptitude
she had organised her factories for the making of guns, shells, and
rifles. But she required to be supplied with the raw materials now
lacking to her.
A far graver need was soon to arise in Russia. The German victories of
1915 placed Germany in possession of 70 per cent of the Russian
steel-producing area. Her millions from that time required arming, not
merely for victory, but also, it soon became clear, even for
defence.[80]
To meet this colossal situation Great Britain was but poorly provided.
The Navy absorbed for her great needs the principal national engineering
resources of the country. The only British military machine of
munition-supply at the opening of the war was the Ordnance Department of
the War Office. Nothing could exceed the devotion and zeal of the men at
the head of that office. But it was hopelessly under-equipped for so
great a call. It was wanting in staff, resources, and ideas. It was
perilously detached from our great civilian industries. It found itself
faced with unparalleled difficulties of material and labour. For with
the opening of the war we were cut off from some of our most important
raw ingredients for explosives; and the very fervour of our first great
recruiting campaign, too little directed and restricted, denuded the
possible workshops of war.
There were many crises in this situation. One of the gravest occurred in
the late autumn of 1914, when we were faced with a complete inability to
supply the army with explosives for the making of mines. How that
situation was met by a group of civil servants and public men, and its
first acuteness lessened by the formation of an Explosives Committee in
the Board of Trade under Lord Moulton has already been revealed by Lord
Moulton himself.[81] It is one of the great stories of the war.
But no such departmental devices could long suffice to meet the terrific
call of the situation as a whole. As the weeks passed, it gradually
became clear to Mr. Lloyd George that, if we were to be saved, a
tremendous and radical change was required. This was nothing less than
the calling to our aid in this war all those great manufacturing
resources of the nation which had given us our ascendancy in peace.
The manufacturers, indeed, were quite willing to come. They needed no
call. They were eager to help. They already clamoured at the door.
But the soldier is not suited by the traditions of his calling to work
easily with the civilian. That very virtue of iron discipline which is
the habit of war militated against the free play of mind essential to a
new development of industry. There is a story of a great business man
from the North of England who, after being summoned to the War Office
for the transaction of business, was kept waiting for two hours, and
then told that the officer in command had gone off for his lunch. He is
said to have picked up his hat and said decisively: “Tell the General
that if he wants me again he must send a battalion to fetch me.” It was
a fair reminder that there are limits to the power of mere military
discipline.
Those who lived in the centre of things during the spring of 1915 will
remember the flood of such narratives—many of them told to the House of
Commons[82]—which came from the mouths of indignant and offended
manufacturers. Offers were rejected which afterwards proved essential.
Orders were given and then forgotten. Machinery was set up and then not
used. There was devotion and zeal; but there was no adequate
organisation to meet the demands of the present, and no proper foresight
as to the needs of the future.
Lord Kitchener, indeed, had a deserved reputation for organising
capacity; but that eminent man was hopelessly overwhelmed. It was the
fault of those who expected too much of him—who first spoke of him as a
god and finally treated him as a dog. Reluctantly giving up Egypt for
the War Office, Lord Kitchener found himself in control of a ship
unmanned. The splendid military staff gathered at the War Office had
been scattered to all the fields of war. He found himself very much
alone. He felt compelled to act as his own Chief of Staff, his own
organiser of recruiting, his own controller of supplies. Among his great
gifts he did not possess that of easy and swift delegation. He saw that
the War Office required to be built up afresh; but he did not feel equal
to building it up during a great war. The result was that he took too
much on himself, and most lamentably diminished his own splendid utility
in the process.
Such a method was certain to lead to neglect and delay in some of the
chief functions of war. All were delayed and many were neglected. But
where delay and neglect met in most disastrous combinations was in this
matter of the supply of the munitions of war.
So grave did this defect become that it threatened our cause before long
with irretrievable disaster. It was only a great effort of the whole
nation, combined in one common impulse of energy, that saved the cause.
In that effort Mr. Lloyd George took a great and leading part.
His plea for guns in the autumn of 1914 was followed up by a visit to
France, where he was enabled to obtain insight into the great effort of
industrial reorganisation which had enabled France to rearm after the
loss of the North, and the shock of the German invasion. He returned
with a full report on this achievement, due to the great energy and
splendid public spirit of that great Frenchman, M. Albert Thomas.
Mr. Lloyd George proposed to the Cabinet that Great Britain should
follow in the steps of France. Mr. Asquith was quite willing; and a
Cabinet Committee was set up with advisory powers to work out the
details. The Committee sat at the War Office with Lord Kitchener in the
chair. The matter was fully discussed. The War Office appeared to agree
to adopt the French scheme. Weeks passed. Then it was discovered that
little or no action had been taken. It was clear that it was the
executive arm which was at fault.
The winter months passed, and there was little quickening of energy.
Hundreds of thousands of the Kitchener recruits were without clothes,
arms, rifles, or guns. Rumours and murmurs began to come from the front
of the tremendous British losses from superior German guns.
In February a new danger became instantly vital. The news came from the
East of Europe of the definite breakdown of the Russian armaments. Their
gigantic armies threatened to become unarmed mobs.
In the West things were little better. During February and March fuller
details began to reach London—of one British machine-gun against ten
German; of four British shells against forty German. The suppression of
the free and independent War Correspondent had cast a veil of silence
over the realities of the war. The truth was struggling to come through;
and not all the efforts of all the censors could entirely suffocate and
strangle it. But it meant that any zealous Minister had to fight hard
against a lethal atmosphere of secrecy that soon bred ignorance.
Against this atmosphere Mr. Lloyd George persistently battled; and in
the early weeks of April he made a fresh appeal for further speeding up.
The Prime Minister (Mr. Asquith) agreed. On April 13th (1915) he
appointed a strong Munitions Committee, known as the Treasury Committee,
consisting of Ministers, civil servants and experts, with Mr. Lloyd
George in the chair.[83]
That Committee had no executive powers. It could only co-ordinate
departments, and make suggestions. It was no more than a departmental
Committee; but, in spite of this shortcoming it was able to give
valuable advice, much of which was acted upon. It supplied new ideas. It
was often able to meet special emergencies.
But from the very beginning this Committee suffered from one grave,
paralysing defect: it could obtain no full or comprehensive view of the
needs and demands of the war. Perhaps the chiefs of the War Office did
not know themselves. In the hurry and bustle of war perhaps it is not
incredible they had no leisure to take the larger and longer view. But
in a long war that view was indispensable to action. The result of that
ignorance, therefore, was fatal to this Committee. It never knew enough
to act or decide with effect. Lord Kitchener may have had his reasons;
but the fact stands out that he refrained from arming this important
Munitions Committee of April and May, 1915, with the full knowledge
necessary for real power.
At this point an astonishing thing occurred. The Western Army took the
matter into their own hands.
There are many things that fighting men will endure—incredible
tortures, surpassing those of the early martyrs. But there is one thing
which always tries them beyond the limit: that is to be hit without the
power of hitting back—to be shelled without being able to shell. Such
was now (in April and May, 1915) the intolerable situation of the men
under General French’s command in France.[84] They decided that it was
not their duty to accept this cruel fate without some effort to find a
cure.
They found their applications misunderstood, ignored, postponed. They
realised that Ministers were not allowed to know the truth. They
gathered from his public utterance at Newcastle on April 20th[85] that
the truth was being concealed even from the Prime Minister (Mr. Asquith)
himself. They perceived that the public were blind-folded. They
determined to take steps to open their eyes.
With this design and object, the Headquarters Staff in France invited
certain famous journalists and publicists to the front to witness for
themselves the results of the lack of proper shells in the attack on the
Aubers ridge.[86] Most of those visitors found themselves helpless in
the grip of a double censorship—in France and in England. One of them,
however, the famous military correspondent of the _Times_,[87] wrote his
despatch on the spot and sent it through the censorship of the field of
battle, severe indeed, but on this occasion, perhaps, a little more
friendly. In this way, and thanks to the historic prestige of the great
organ which published it, there appeared in the _Times_ of May 14th,
1915, that famous message from the front, “mutilated and twice
censored,”[88] which itself proved so powerful a petard.
“The want of an unlimited supply of high explosive was a fatal bar to
our success”—that was the verdict of the _Times_ correspondent; and it
was confirmed by every observer and every soldier at the front,
including the soldier members of the House of Commons. Once the word was
uttered in public, the floodgates were opened. It was in vain that the
Government tried to stem the torrent of evidence. Lord Kitchener rose on
May 18th to make a statement in the House of Lords; but in that speech
he showed that strange habit of the unexpected which baulked even his
friends. For, instead of denying, he practically admitted the
indictment, and for the first time stated in public what seemed to
contradict the Newcastle utterance of the Prime Minister—that there had
been “undoubtedly considerable delay in producing the material.”
This was indeed a mild way of stating the true facts. These continued
now to pour through from the front with all the indecency of truth
emancipated. The order-paper of the House of Commons began to bristle
with questions and threats of debate; and it was only on the plea of
public emergency that the Government postponed crisis.
On the following day Mr. Lloyd George received information which more
than confirmed the statement of the _Times_ correspondent. He realised
with amazement that the Munitions Committee had been kept in ignorance
of essentials; that the mainspring had been missing from the watch. He
determined to resign from a function so void of power; and on May 19th
he wrote a letter announcing his decision, and giving his grave and
weighty reasons. He refused to remain chairman of a Committee which had
no real executive power.
The situation now moved rapidly.
On the afternoon of that day (May 19th) Mr. Asquith announced to the
House of Commons that the Liberal Government which had been in power
since 1910 had ceased to exist, and that he proposed to reconstruct the
Government “on a broader personal and political basis.” In other words,
he had decided for Coalition.
It was a wise and prudent decision. The Opposition had full grasp of the
situation at the front. They had not yet manœuvred for battle, but there
was already forming in the minds of their leaders the conviction that
they could no longer accept the responsibility of a silence which would
inevitably spell complicity. If they were to continue silent they must
share the government. The only alternative was the open scandal of a
bitter party struggle, not without the possibility of grave injury to
national interests.
But a Coalition Government alone was not enough. It was necessary to
have some guarantee that the general calamitous shortage of
munitions[89] should not continue. It is not the habit of England to
send her youth unarmed to face her enemies. At all costs this grievous
peril must cease.
But it was already clear to all parties that the War Office was far too
heavily burdened to continue bearing this responsibility. There must be
a division of function. Lord Kitchener must be left to raise the armies.
Another office must take over the duty of arming and equipping them.
From this conviction arose the idea of a new Department—the Ministry of
Munitions—for which Mr. Lloyd George was already, by the unanimous
voice of public opinion, declared elect.
So on May 25th, 1915, after seven years as Chancellor of the Exchequer,
Mr. Lloyd George closed the door of the Treasury behind him and became
the first British Minister of Munitions. It was a great adventure. He
was leaving behind him the secure vantage of an old historic Department.
He was entering upon a region unexplored, without map or compass,
without precedent or guide.
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[79] “What we stint in materials we squander in life; that is the one
great lesson of munitions.”—Mr. Lloyd George in the House of Commons,
December 21st, 1915.
[80] The evidence in the Sukhomikoff trial has now brought out the
immensity of this shortcoming, not then fully divulged to the British
Government by the Russian governing power.
[81] See his evidence in the Mond libel action.
[82] See Debate of April 22nd, 1915. Mr. Bonar Law gave some striking
instances.
[83] Among the other members of that Committee were Mr. Balfour, Mr.
Montagu, Mr. George Booth, Sir Herbert Llewellyn Smith, Admiral Tudor,
and General Von Donop. Mr. Lloyd George made on April 22nd, 1915, a
statement in the House of Commons as to the work achieved by this
Committee.
[84] See his statement to the _Journal_ correspondent in September 1917.
[85] “I saw a statement the other day that the operations, not only of
our Army, but of our Allies were being crippled, or at any rate
hampered, by our failure to provide the necessary ammunition. There is
not a word of truth in that statement.” (Loud cheers.) _Times_ report.
[86] See the full account in Lord French’s “1914.” His statements have
not in substance been affected by the controversies which have raged
round this book.
[87] Lieutenant-Colonel Charles A’Court Repington, C.M.G.
[88] See the _Times_ leading article. But on May 18th Mr. Asquith said
in the House of Commons that the despatch was censored in France and Mr.
Tennant added that it never came before the British Censorship. The open
official chagrin at its emergence into print is one of the most
significant features of the whole episode.
[89] Of all munitions, not only explosives. It proved subsequently that
the chief want was big guns for the high-explosive shells and that the
smaller guns were better suited with shrapnel.