The Correspondence between Mr. Asquith and Mr. Lloyd George
Memorandum of Mr. Lloyd George to Prime Minister, December 1st, 1916.
War Office, Whitehall, S.W.
1. That the War Committee consist of three members—two of whom must be the First Lord of the Admiralty and the Secretary of State for War, who should have in their offices deputies capable of attending to and deciding all departmental business—and a third Minister without portfolio. One of the three to be Chairman.
2. That the War Committee shall have full powers, subject to the supreme control of the Prime Minister, to direct all questions connected with the war.
3. The Prime Minister, in his discretion, to have the power to refer any question to the Cabinet.
4. Unless the Cabinet, in reference by the Prime Minister, reverses decision of the War Cabinet, that decision to be carried out by the Department concerned.
5. The War Committee to have the power to invite any Minister and to summon the expert advisers and officers of any Department to its meetings.
10 Downing Street, Whitehall, S.W.
January 1st, 1916.
Secret
My dear Lloyd George,
I have now had time to reflect on our conversation this morning, and to study your memorandum.
Though I do not altogether share your dark estimate and forecast of the situation, actual and perspective, I am in complete agreement that we have reached a critical situation in the war, and that our methods of procedure, with the experience which we have gained during the last few months, call for reconsideration and revision.
The two main defects of the War Committee, which has done excellent work, are:
(1) That its numbers are too large.
(2) That there is delay, evasion, and often obstruction on the part of the Departments in giving effect to its decisions.
I might with good reason add (3) that it is often kept in ignorance by the Departments of information, essential and even vital, of a technical kind, upon the problems that come before it: and (4) that it is overcharged with duties, many of which might well be relegated to subordinate bodies.
The result is that I am clearly of opinion that the War Committee should be reconstituted, and its relation to and authority over the Departments be more clearly defined and more effectively asserted.
I come now to your specific proposals.
In my opinion, whatever changes are made in the composition and functions of the War Committee, the Prime Minister must be its Chairman. He cannot be relegated to the position of an arbiter in the background or a referee to the Cabinet.
In regard to its composition, I agree that the War Secretary and the First Lord of the Admiralty are necessary members. I am inclined to add to the same category the Minister of Munitions. There should be another member, either without portfolio or charged only with comparatively light departmental duties. One of the members should be appointed Vice-Chairman.
I purposely do not in this letter discuss the delicate and difficult question of personnel.
The Committee should, as far as possible, sit de die diem, and have full power to see that its decisions (subject to appeal to the Cabinet) are carried out promptly and effectively by the Departments.
The reconstitution of the War Committee should be accompanied by the setting up of a Committee of National Organisation, to deal with the purely domestic side of war problems. It should have executive powers within its own domain.
The Cabinet would in all cases have ultimate authority.
Yours very sincerely,
(Sd.) H. H. Asquith.
10 Downing Street, S.W.
December 4th, 1916.
Secret
My dear Lloyd George,
Such productions as the first leading article in to-day’s Times, showing the infinite possibilities for misunderstanding and misrepresentation of such an arrangement as we considered yesterday, make me at least doubtful as to its feasibility. Unless the impression is at once corrected that I am being relegated to the position of an irresponsible spectator of the war, I cannot possibly go on.
The suggested arrangement was to the following effect. The Prime Minister to have supreme and effective control of War Policy.
The agenda of the War Committee will be submitted to him; its Chairman will report to him daily; he can direct it to consider particular topics or proposals; and all its conclusions will be subject to his approval or veto. He can, of course, at his own discretion attend meetings of the Committee.
Yours sincerely,
(Sd.) H. H. Asquith.
War Office, Whitehall, S.W.
December 4th, 1916.
My Dear Prime Minister,
I have not seen the Times’ article. But I hope you will not attach undue importance to these effusions. I have had these misrepresentations to put up with for months. Northcliffe frankly wants a smash. Derby and I do not. Northcliffe would like to make this and any other rearrangement under your Premiership impossible. Derby and I attach great importance to your retaining your present position—effectively. I cannot restrain, or, I fear, influence Northcliffe. I fully accept in letter and in spirit your summary of the suggested arrangement—subject, of course, to personnel.
Ever sincerely,
(Sd.) D. Lloyd George.
10 Downing Street, Whitehall, S.W.
December 4th, 1916
Secret
My dear Lloyd George,
Thank you for your letter of this morning.
The King gave me to-day authority to ask and accept the resignation of all my colleagues, and to form a new Government on such lines as I should submit to him. I start therefore with a clean slate.
The first question which I have to consider is the constitution of the new War Committee.
After full consideration of the matter in all its aspects, I have come decidedly to the conclusion that it is not possible that such a Committee could be made workable and effective without the Prime Minister as its Chairman. I quite agree that it will be necessary for him, in view of the other calls upon his time and energy, to delegate from time to time the Chairmanship to another Minister as representative and locum tenens; but (if he is to retain the authority, which corresponds to his responsibility as Prime Minister) he must continue to be, as he always has been, its permanent President. I am satisfied, on reflection, that any other arrangement (such as, for instance, the one which I indicated to you in my letter of to-day) would be found in experience impracticable and incompatible with the retention of the Prime Minister’s final and supreme control.
The other question, which you have raised, relates to the personnel of the Committee. Here again, after deliberate consideration, I find myself unable to agree with some of your suggestions. I think we both agree that the First Lord of the Admiralty must, of necessity, be a member of the Committee.
I cannot (as I told you yesterday) be a party to any suggestion that Mr. Balfour should be displaced. The technical side of the Board of Admiralty has been reconstituted, with Sir John Jellicoe as First Sea Lord. I believe Mr. Balfour to be, under existing conditions, the necessary head of the Board.
I must add that Sir Edward Carson (for whom personally and in every other way I have the greatest regard) is not, from the only point of view which is significant to me (namely, the most effective prosecution of the war) the man best qualified among my colleagues present or past to be a member of the War Committee.
I have only to say, in conclusion, that I am strongly of opinion that the War Committee (without any disparagement of the existing Committee, which in my judgment is a most efficient body, and has done and is doing invaluable work) ought to be reduced in number: so that it can sit more frequently, and overtake more easily the daily problems with which it has to deal. But in any reconstruction of the Committee, such as I have, and have for some time past had in view, the governing consideration to my mind is the special capacity of the men who are to sit on it for the work which it has to do.
That is a question which I must reserve for myself to decide.
Yours very sincerely,
(Sd.) H. H. Asquith.
December 5th, 1916.
My dear Prime Minister,
I received your letter with some surprise.
On Friday I made proposals which involved not merely your retention of the Premiership, but the supreme control of the war, whilst the executive functions, subject to that supreme control, were left to others. I thought you then received these suggestions favourably. In fact, you yourself proposed that I should be the Chairman of this Executive Committee, although, as you know, I never put forward that demand. On Saturday you wrote me a letter in which you completely went back on that proposition. You sent for me on Sunday, and put before me other proposals; these proposals you embodied in a letter written on Monday:
“The Prime Minister to have supreme and effective control of war policy.
“The agenda of the War Committee will be submitted to him; its Chairman will report to him daily; he can direct it to consider particular topics or proposals; and all its conclusions will be subject to his approval or veto. He can, of course, at his own discretion, attend meetings of the Committee.”
These proposals safeguarded your position and power as Prime Minister in every particular. I immediately wrote you accepting them “in letter and in spirit.” It is true that on Sunday I expressed views as to the constitution of the Committee, but these were for discussion. To-day you have gone back on your own proposals.
I have striven my utmost to cure the obvious defects of the War Committee without overthrowing the Government. As you are aware, on several occasions during the last two years I have deemed it my duty to express profound dissatisfaction with the Government’s method of conducting the war. Many a time, with the road to victory open in front of us, we have delayed and hesitated whilst the enemy were erecting barriers that finally checked the approach. There has been delay, hesitation, lack of forethought and vision. I have endeavoured repeatedly to warn the Government of the dangers, both verbally and in written memoranda and letters, which I crave your leave now to publish if my action is challenged; but I have either failed to secure decisions or I have secured them when it is too late to avert the evils. The latest illustration is our lamentable failure to give timely support to Roumania.
I have more than once asked to be released from my responsibility for a policy with which I was in thorough disagreement, but at your urgent personal request, I remained in the Government. I realise that when the country is in the peril of a great war, Ministers have not the same freedom to resign on disagreement. At the same time I have always felt—and felt deeply—that I was in a false position, inasmuch as I could never defend in a whole-hearted manner the action of a Government of which I was a member. We have thrown away opportunity after opportunity, and I am convinced, after deep and anxious reflection, that it is my duty to leave the Government in order to inform the people of the real condition of affairs, and to give them an opportunity, before it is too late, to save their native land from a disaster which is inevitable if the present methods are longer persisted in. As all delay is fatal in war, I place my office without further parley at your disposal.
It is with great personal regret that I have come to this conclusion. In spite of mean and unworthy insinuations to the contrary—insinuations which I fear are always inevitable in the case of men who hold prominent but not primary positions in any administration—I have felt a strong personal attachment to you as my Chief. As you yourself said on Sunday, we have acted together for ten years and never a quarrel, although we have had many a grave difference on questions of policy. You have treated me with great courtesy and kindness: for all that I thank you. Nothing would have induced me to part now except an overwhelming sense that the course of action which has been pursued has put the country—and not merely the country, but throughout the world, the principles for which you and I have always stood throughout our political lives—in the greatest peril that has ever overtaken them.
As I am fully conscious of the importance of preserving national unity, I propose to give your Government complete support in the vigorous prosecution of the war; but unity without action is nothing but futile carnage, and I cannot be responsible for that. Vigour and vision are the supreme need of this hour.
Yours sincerely,
(Sd.) D. Lloyd George.
10 Downing Street, S.W.
December 5th, 1916.
Private
My dear Lloyd George,
I need not tell you that I have read your letter of to-day with much regret.
I do not comment upon it for the moment, except to say that I cannot wholly accept your account of what passed between us in regard to my connection with the War Committee.
In particular, you have omitted to quote the first and most material part of my letter of yesterday.
Yours very sincerely,
(Sd.) H. H. Asquith.
In the meantime, I feel sure that you will see the obvious necessity, in the public interest, of not publishing, at this moment, any part of our correspondence.
War Office, S.W.
December 5th, 1916.
My dear Prime Minister,
I cannot announce my resignation without assigning the reason. Your request that I should not publish the correspondence that led up to and necessitated it places me therefore in an embarrassing and unfair position. I must give reasons for the grave step I have taken. If you forbid publication of the correspondence, do you object to my stating in another form my version of the causes that led to my resigning?
Yours sincerely,
(Sd.) D. Lloyd George.
As to the first part of your letter, the publication of the letter would cover the whole ground.
10 Downing Street, S.W.
December 5th, 1916.
My dear Lloyd George,
It may make a difference to you (in reply to your last letter) if I tell you at once that I have tendered my resignation to the King. In any case, I should deprecate in the public interest the publication in its present form at this moment of your letter to me of this morning.
Of course, I have neither the power nor the wish to prevent your stating in some other form the causes which led you to take the step which you have taken.
Yours very sincerely,
(Sd.) H. H. Asquith.
APPENDIX C
THE PEACE CONFERENCE
The Critical Russian Debate of January, 1919
Bullitt Exhibit No. 14
McD. I.C. 114. Secretaries’ notes of a conversation held in M. Pichon’s room, at the Quai D’Orsay, on Tuesday, January 21st, 1919, at 15 hours (3 p.m.).