THE NEW MINISTRY OF MUNITIONS
“Now all the youth of England is on fire,
And silken dalliance in the wardrobe lies;
Now thrive the armourers, and honour’s thought
Reigns solely in the breast of every man.”
Henry V, Prologue to Act II.
The little group of men whom Mr. Lloyd George assembled round him at No. 6, Whitehall Gardens, during the Whit-week of 1915, certainly seemed to have no easy task before them. A new Ministry had been founded, and a Bill to define its functions was being drawn up. But the Ministry possessed neither buildings nor staff, neither furniture nor office paper. It stepped forth into the world bare as a new-born babe.[[90]]
Even when its functions had been defined by Act of Parliament there always hung about this enterprise an atmosphere of indefinable adventure. Its relations to other Departments, and especially to the War Office, were never precisely defined. It was always the parvenu of Ministries. Throughout the crises of 1915 and 1916 it carried with it the spirit of Esau, its hand against every man and every man’s hand against it.
After all, that was precisely the kind of office for which Mr. Lloyd George was best fitted. He was ever impatient of precedents; here was a case where he had to make his own precedents. He always loved trespassing. Here was an office where every movement was practically a raid on the ground sacred to some other Department.
He was never in the least troubled by the restrictions of the situation. He soon found out one vital fact—that our supply of shells had sunk to 75,000. But he rapidly grasped that there were many other things required for success besides shells. There were, for instance, guns to fire them from—big guns such as were entirely lacking at that time. In June of 1915, finding that he still could obtain no sure or certain idea of what was needed at the front, he travelled to Boulogne, and met a little party of officers, many of them French, in a small café. The party consisted partly of Generals, and partly of regimental officers. He listened to all; for he wanted to know what was wanted in the firing-line as much as what was thought to be wanted at Headquarters. He closely questioned the French artillerists as to the number of guns they were using. General Du Cane[[91]] was there from our Headquarters’ Staff; and he brought with him a full report of what guns were required according to their views.
Mr. Lloyd George began to realise that the need for big guns was the centre of the situation.
After his cross-examination was over, Mr. Lloyd George turned to General Du Cane:
“Don’t you think you had better go back and revise your estimates?”
General Du Cane promptly agreed—he had himself been converted. He went back to Headquarters.
At midday there was a break in these urgent talks. M. Albert Thomas suggested that in the afternoon they ought to have a formal meeting to go into the whole subject.
“I am sorry,” said Mr. Lloyd George, “but I must get back to England.”
“Go back already?”
“Yes, already—there is not a moment to be lost. These big guns must be ordered.”
He went back. A revived estimate of the munition requirements in France was sent to Whitehall. Mr. Lloyd George increased that estimate. He sent it across to Lord Kitchener. The great man, willing but doubtful of our resources, sent it back with a comment: “That will take three years.”[[92]]
Mr. Lloyd George then called together all the heads of the armament firms. He laid the scheme before them. They viewed it with grave doubts. They produced laborious estimates—discussed—consulted their chiefs.
Mr. Lloyd George put aside all the papers.
“Gentlemen,” he said, “this has to be done if the country is to be saved. You will do it!”
There was nothing more to be said. They went away to do it; and they did it.
The high officials responsible for financial control were a little disturbed at his way of conducting business. Later on, yet more guns were ordered, and official protests from other Departments were carried up to the highest quarters. But before a decision could be reached the orders had been given out, and the great guns—the guns that saved France and England—were on the way.[[93]]
That was characteristic of his way of using the new machinery of the new Ministry.
How this new Department of State was gradually built up; how picked men from all over the country, and from the Civil Service, were gathered to the side of the new Minister; how buildings were secured from day to day for the work of administration; how excessive hours were worked and excessive risks were run by old as well as young, and women as well as men,—this story has already been largely told in the Parliamentary statements of the Munition Ministers,[[94]] and it is one of the most romantic and thrilling chapters in the history of the war.
There are one or two features in the history of this movement which especially illustrate the characteristics of Mr. Lloyd George and his power of appeal to the public.
The first of these was the rally of the business men of England in response to his call. The British commercial classes were not, in the period before the war, particularly attached to Mr. Lloyd George. They had some “bones to pick” with him. But it must be said, to their eternal credit, that when they realised the need of their country the old hatchet was at once put underground. They came in hundreds to help him. Many of them came without price, leaving their own factories and workshops, putting aside their chance of personal profit, and content to live on such salaries as their business could afford them. It is true that many of them have risen to high honour in this service. It is well that it should be so.
Happily there is sufficient soul of good in things to justify sacrifice and even to reward it. It is no ill thing that many of these men have risen to high honour and blazoned their names on the roll of England’s noblest servants.
But it was not only the commercial men that came forward voluntarily to answer the call. The Civil Servants also volunteered from all branches of the Service to undertake increased responsibility without additional gain. It was laid down from the beginning that none of those Civil Servants who came into the Munition Service should receive extra pay for extra work. Second division clerks raised to higher posts still continued to receive the old salaries; so great was the eagerness to save the country that men worked overtime without complaint, and there were in those early days many men who came suspiciously near to working night shifts as well as day.
It was precisely the combination of the best Civil Servants with the best commercial men that gave to the Ministry of Munitions such a marvellous touch of efficiency. Manufacturers coming up from the provinces were now pleasantly surprised to find a new swiftness of despatch in the conduct of their business. Every one brought into touch with the Ministry of Munitions found a new spirit which seemed to give a new hope for the government of this country. There was a certain thrill about the most common affairs within those walls. Every servant of the Ministry, down to the very boys and girls who carried the messages, seemed to feel that they were called to a high task for a great end. It was in this spirit that this great effort was undertaken and sustained throughout the years that followed. At the same time the country as a whole found itself provided at last with a capable machinery for using its services. Not only was the centre quickened and sharpened to new uses, but the whole of the United Kingdom was mapped out and in every district there sat a Committee who formed a careful estimate of the resources of that area.[[95]]
On the basis of that estimate there now began to grow up, as if by magic, that vast network of new war factories which saved the armies in France. The factories grew up chiefly near the iron and coal which provided the raw material of munitions and handy to the great supplies of skilled labour.[[96]]
But no adjustment could avoid a great upheaval of social life. For it was part of this great change that a vast mass of labour must be transferred from the industries of peace to the industries of war.
It was also part of the great stress of this crisis that the State must be sure of its labour and that it must be able to draw from that labour the utmost power of effort, sustained and continued through a prolonged period of time.
Here lay the necessity for a new War Labour policy, difficult and delicate to justify and administer, but indispensable for the safety of the country.
It was clearly impossible to guarantee the adequate war output of this vast aggregate of factories and workshops on the basis of the old peace conditions—with an uncertain supply of skilled labour shifting about from shop to shop along the ordinary channels of demand and supply. The habit of “stealing” labour by the offer of higher wages had already grown to so high a point in the early days of the war that the Munitions Committee had had to issue an order under the Defence of the Realm Act making it an offence to “entice.”[[97]] Thus the peace freedom of movement had already been suspended. But now it was necessary to carry the restrictions further and to guarantee to the nation at war a hold on its workmen similar in kind, though not in degree, to the hold on its soldiers.
Mr. Lloyd George characteristically wished to make the bold appeal, and to say to the workmen: “Submit to the same discipline as your sons in the trenches. Place yourselves under the same law, with this only difference—that you are better-paid men.”[[98]] But this proposal, when laid before the leaders of the Trade Unions, met with fierce opposition. The “conscription of labour,” as it was called, was denounced as a “new slavery.” Some degree of national consent to such a measure was plainly necessary. So that proposal was dropped, and the Ministry of Munitions set out to search for a new policy.
The policy finally agreed upon took shape in the first Munitions Act and the subsequent amending measures. Round those measures a great strife afterwards arose, and it may be worth while to say something as to their origin and justification.
It was absolutely necessary, if the armies were to be properly supplied with the immense mass of munitions required, that the workers should both consent to the limitation of their freedom of movement and should also suspend a number of those limitations and conditions of toil which had been won in the course of the long conflict between Capital and Labour.
It was desirable to come to a bargain; and with that view the Trade Unions were consulted at every point. If the Government must trust Labour, Labour must also trust the Government. Labour must have assurance that a temporary suspension of conditions should not prejudice the position in time of peace. That assurance had been already given, and was now formally embodied in the Munitions Act.[[99]]
On these broad lines had grown up this Concordat, which, with all its frictions and inevitable misunderstandings, still carried the country through the moments of gravest peril. The liberty of Labour was gravely restricted; but the great and sufficient reward for such a sacrifice to every patriotic workman always was the knowledge that brave lives were being saved and brave hearts sustained at the front. Another important thing was that the country was being saved also.
Certainly the restrictions were very formidable. No workman or workwoman could leave their employment in the war factory without a special “leaving certificate.” All rules or customs restricting labour were suspended; no strikes were allowed; and all questions of wages and hours were to be settled by compulsory arbitration. To administer these rules Munition Tribunals were set up in every district; and they had powers of inflicting heavy fines. Such provisions must depend largely on the good faith and good-will of employers; and there must always be some who will not “play the game.” Hence the chronic movements of revolt—the rise of the shop stewards, the engineers’ strike, the war-weariness of so many industrial districts in the summer of 1917.
In the autumn of 1917 Mr. Winston Churchill, the new Minister of Munitions, found it possible to suspend the leaving certificate and to slacken some of these conditions. But there could be no doubt as to their necessity up to that time.
The sole and sufficient excuse for these grave restrictions of liberty was always the war, and the war alone. War is a terrible master; and wherever he raises his head, few escape his tyranny. All that can be said is that, with all their troubles, the sufferings of the men in the workshops were as grains in the balance against the sufferings of the men in the trenches.
But, even so, the work of the men alone was not enough to meet the need. Other sources of labour must be tapped. It was now necessary to call in the women to the aid of the men.
Mr. Lloyd George ventured on a bold appeal. He asked the women to come from their pleasures and their comforts; he asked them to save the lives of their brothers, their sweethearts, and their husbands. They came in multitudes. They filled the ranks, and they filled the shells.[[100]] They silenced their sourest critics, even in their own sex. They worked by day and they worked by night. They earned for themselves a new position in the State. They showed that women could be patriots themselves, as well as the wives and mothers of patriots. Not easily will England forget those splendid women of 1915-18.
As for Mr. Lloyd George himself, he worked as hard as any one in the ranks of this new Labour Army. He was here, there, and everywhere. All through the summer of 1915 he travelled over the country, appealing, stimulating, and even when necessary rebuking. He visited all the industrial centres. He spoke straight to the English working classes; and it was only their worst friends who resented his honesty. He told them to suspend their peace weaknesses in this supreme hour; and he told them, as John Stuart Mill told them once before, where their chief weakness lay. He set up a Drink Control Board, as well as Munition Tribunals; and all that was best and most loyal among the artisans acquiesced. Ça ira; the plan worked; the machine began to do its duty.
Nothing was left undone. To fill up the ranks, unskilled men were trained to do the work of skilled. The Board of Trade organised a special army of Munition Volunteers. In the autumn of 1915 there was a great effort, in conjunction with the War Office, to bring back from the front some thousands[[101]] of those numerous munition workers, iron-workers, and miners who had been allowed to recruit in the first fine flush of the recruiting enthusiasm in 1914.
Mr. Lloyd George gave his whole mind to this one question—the making of war material. He had, as we have seen, found the Army with only 75,000 shells in hand in June, 1915; when he left the Ministry in June, 1916, he had provided shells in millions. He himself mastered the technique of shell-making and gun-making; he visited the factories and studied the machinery; he listened to every complaint from the soldiers at the front; he investigated every defect.
The real secret, indeed, of his work was that he kept in touch with the armies at the Western Front, constantly visiting them, studying their needs on the spot, listening to the actual fighting men. Above all he studied the German inventions. After a short while, thanks to the labours of our young scientists from the Universities, he was able to provide our soldiers with gas-masks that enabled them to face unshaken the worst deviltry of the enemy, and with gas that was a fit reply to theirs. He provided our men with flame-throwers which made them a fair match when they faced the flame-throwers of the Teuton.
I remember his taking me, one day in 1915, to see his little collection of these horrible devices in the basement of the old Metropole Hotel. He showed me the model shells, mounting by slow gradations to a giant’s height. He lingered halfway along this row of shells. He put his hand on one. “When I started the Ministry,” he said, “our shells went only as high as this. The German shells went to the top of the range. Was that fair to our soldiers?” It was a vivid illustration of what they were achieving.
So this gigantic new organisation was built up, and gradually brought its full weight into the struggle. Its functions were constantly enlarging. By proved fitness to rule over one city this new Ministry soon achieved the right to rule over ten. From supplying it took to making, from making it took to designing, and to designing after its own ideas. The great net-work of its new factories gradually spread over the land. Greatly daring, it built; it housed; it fed. From a servant it became a master. In August, 1915, it took over from the War Office the Royal Factory at Woolwich; and so it became the supreme war-maker of the nation.
Meanwhile, the soldiers at the front grew more confident and serene. They felt the support of the great working nation behind them. They grew more confident of supremacy. They knew that even the women-kind were “doing their bit.” In each great battle, as the shells swept over their heads, they felt a new power at work in their favour.[[102]] They “went over the top” with the knowledge that the mailed fist of Prussia was to be met with the iron hammer of England.
To this new feeling and the confidence born of it we may largely attribute the great victories of the Somme, the storming of the Vimy Ridge, and the smashing onslaught on Messines.
Many Englishmen, great and small, have a right to share in the glory of this great work. We must not forget those men who, before the great central crisis arose, battled alone against a sea of errors and failings in high places—great civil servants like Sir Hubert Llewellyn Smith, or great public servants like Lord Moulton. Such men do not labour in the limelight. We must remember their services.
Nor must we forget loyal political helpers like Dr. Addison, Mr. Lloyd George’s first lieutenant at the Ministry, and Mr. Montagu, his successor.
But, when all is said and done, the man who did the deed was Mr. Lloyd George. Without his resolution and decision England would have fared badly in that dark hour. It was he who designed, directed, and completed this noble and stupendous endeavour. It was he who carried it through. It was he who, when others failed, armed and strengthened our armies. It is scarcely too much to say that it was he who, under Providence, saved England.
[90] See Dr. Addison’s description (House of Commons, June 28th, 1917): “There was to be one aim, and one aim only—to obtain the goods and make delivery of them to the Army. No other interests and no considerations of leisure were to be entertained.”
[91] Lieutenant-General Sir John Philip Du Cane, Major-General R.A., G.H.Q., 1915. Afterwards British representative with Marshal Foch.
[92] Similarly, to Lord French he said eight years (Journal interview, Sept. 1917).
[93] Mr. Montagu, in the House of Commons, on August 16th, 1916, said openly that “Mr. Lloyd George ordered far more guns than were thought by the War Office to be necessary, and yet received new requirements showing that he had not ordered enough.”
[94] Mr. Lloyd George’s statement of December 21st, 1915, Mr. Montagu’s statement of August 16th, 1916, and Dr. Addison’s statement of June 28th, 1917.
[95] Twelve areas: England and Wales, 8; Scotland, 2; Ireland, 2; 40 local Munition Committees in the engineering centres consisting of local business men. (Mr. Lloyd George, December 21st, 1915.)
[96] Within a year the labour employed on munitions had gone up from 1,635,000 to 2,250,000, and there were 32 national shell factories, 12 for projectiles, 6 for cartridges, etc. (Mr. Montagu, August 1915.)
[97] There had also been in March an agreement between the Government and the Trade Unions called the Treasury Agreement, and administered by a Labour Advisory Committee. The general line of that agreement was an understanding to suspend restrictive Trade Union practices in return for a promise to tax excess profits.
[98] He put this appeal very strongly in a speech to the engineers at Cardiff on June 11th, 1915.
[99] Clause 20 of the main Act: “This Act shall have effect only so long as the Office of Minister of Munitions and the Ministry of Munitions exist.”
[100] At Woolwich alone the number of women workers rose from 125 to 25,000.
[101] 40,000 soldiers were brought back. In addition, there are 38,000 War Munition Volunteers, and 30,000 Army Reserve Munition Workers. (Dr. Addison’s speech.)
[102] By August 1916 the high-explosive shells had been increased by 66 per cent.; there had been a 14-fold increase of machine-guns; and a 33-fold increase of bombs. Every month saw as many great guns manufactured as existed at the beginning of the war. (Mr. Montagu, August 1916.)