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.
[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.