Woodward D. Lloyd George and the Generals

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had replaced the ailing Carden, called off the attack and informed London that the

forts had to be taken by soldiers. It is now known that the Turkish defenders were

running out of ammunition and that another vigorous assault might have destroyed

the forts and placed Constantinople under the guns of the Allies.

It was against this background that the tireless Lloyd George fought on for his

Balkan strategy throughout February and into early March. Usually inclined to

look on the dark side of news from the front, he was anxious about developments

in the East. In early February, utilizing poison-gas shells, Germany had begun its

successful Masurian “Winter Battle.” Lloyd George was convinced that the poorly

equipped Russian army was in danger of imminent collapse.

If Russia went

under, he was certain that Berlin would concentrate on Serbia to secure her

communications to Turkey.

To stave off a disaster for the Entente, he wanted to concentrate all available

men in the eastern Mediterranean. The Mesopotamian campaign— a “side issue”

he argued—should be abandoned and the troops involved should be sent to the

eastern Mediterranean to strengthen the Allied force being assembled there.

Realizing that the Dardanelles for the moment commanded the field, he was

willing for this force in the East to be used to follow up a successful naval attack.

As he wrote in a memorandum on February 22 for the War Council: “If we have

a large force ready, not merely to occupy Gallipoli, but to take any other military

action which may be necessary in order to establish our supremacy in that quarter,

Roumania, Greece, and I think, very probably, Bulgaria will declare for us.”

But, standing alone in the War Council, he opposed turning the Dardanelles

campaign into a sea and land operation. Only if the navy succeeded should troops

be employed. On February 24, he told the War Council that he “hoped that the

army would not be required or expected to pull the chestnuts out of the fire for the

Navy. If we failed at the Dardanelles we ought to be immediately ready to try

something else.”

Everyone present, of course, understood the direction of

thought of Britain’s leading Balkanite.

Lloyd George’s impatience grew as Britain’s s political leaders awaited the fate

of the naval attack on the Dardanelles. At the very least preparations for an Allied

expeditionary force could be made. But the War Office did nothing. In Lloyd

George’s mind the Foreign Office was just as dilatory. The opportunity to

coordinate military and diplomatic policy might be lost forever. In his February

22 memorandum to the War Council, the Welshman urged “that a special

diplomatic mission, based on our readiness to despatch and maintain a large

expeditionary force in the Balkans, should immediately be sent to Greece and

Roumania to negotiate a military convention.”

On February 26, Lloyd George

reiterated this suggestion in the War Council. Obviously relishing the thought of

going himself, Lloyd George argued in favor of sending “a special envoy” to the

Balkans.

But Grey was “dead opposed to anything of the kind.”

Nor was the

foreign secretary willing to go himself. A disgusted Lloyd George sarcastically

told Hankey that Grey should meet with the French and Russian foreign ministers

at Salonika “instead of going fishing for a holiday.”

BALKANITE 27

It is interesting to speculate what might have been the result if Lloyd George,

that great wheeler-dealer, had gone himself to the Balkans. With the western front

and the Dardanelles operation having first call for British men and guns which

Kitchener deemed available, he would have been forced to try to win over the

Balkan states with promises of territory and money. In all likelihood, he would

have enjoyed no better luck than Grey in finding his way through the thicket of

Balkan politics. The Allies could not agree on what concessions to offer the Balkan

states to entice them into their corner; and the intense Balkan rivalries meant that

if Greece and Rumania joined the Allies, Bulgaria, who commanded the principal

communication lines between Germany and Turkey, would almost certainly join

the Central Powers.

It would be convenient at this point to evaluate the Welshman’s Balkan strategy.

His strategical views have received scathing comment from the professional

soldier. Typical of this criticism would be the recent statement of Brigadier-

General Sir Edward Spears: “The ideas that Lloyd George put forward on military

matters outraged all the teachings of military experience and history, concerning

which the Prime Minister was as ignorant as he was about French poetry or the

French language.”

The reaction at general headquarters to an invasion of the

Balkans was just as trenchant, if more earthy.

Any analysis of Lloyd George’s strategical views must consider both its

political and military aspects. As Lloyd George maintained, British diplomacy in

the Balkans had a fatal weakness: the failure to coordinate military operations with

diplomacy. Eustace Percy, a member of the Foreign Office, later asked a

fundamental question in a memorandum: why were military operations in

Gallipoli initiated when it was obvious that this commitment would make it

impossible to send an adequate force to the Balkans? Also, there had been “no

General Staff work in regard to the Balkans.”

In short the one hand, the Foreign

Office, did not know what the other hand, the War Office, was doing. The Germans

did not make this mistake. To a considerable degree, Erich von Falkenhayn, the

chief of the German general staff, concentrated on the East in 1915 for political

purposes. He was determined to protect his southern flank and bolster Germany’s

allies.

Although Lloyd George was right in principal about the necessity of

coordinating military and diplomatic moves, he can be faulted for his facile

assumptions about creating a Balkan confederation. He argued that boldness and

decisiveness would overcome all political difficulties. But the intervention at

Salonika contemplated by the War Council was almost certainly inadequate for

its purposes. With the Germans throwing their weight against Russia and in

support of Austria, two divisions (about 38,000 men) were unlikely to sway Balkan

opinion. To Lloyd George, of course, limited involvement was better than no

involvement at all; he hoped that Balkan operations once under way would grow

substantially and rapidly. But there was a great element of uncertainty about this.

It is important to keep in mind that Lloyd George, unlike his colleagues, had

military as well as political objectives in mind. He wanted to make what he

28 LLOYD GEORGE AND THE GENERALS

considered the soft underbelly of the Hapsburgs a major theater, shifting Britain’s

emphasis away from the stalemate in the West. Putting aside the political

difficulties of mounting a Balkan offensive for the moment, was this militarily

feasible in 1915? Sir William Robertson, who later became the chief spokesman

for the “Westerners” as chief of the Imperial general staff (hereafter abbreviated

C.I.G.S.), has expressed a major criticism of the military toward opening a great

campaign in the Balkans. Having made a tour of the Balkans in 1906, he was

convinced that “of all countries in Europe none was defensively stronger, and

therefore none less favourable to the offensive, than the Balkan Peninsula.”

Liddell Hart, the apostle of indirect strategy, however, reminds us in reference to

the Balkans that “the acceptance of topographical difficulties has constantly

proved preferable to that of a direct attack on an opponent firmly posted and

prepared to meet it.”

Logistics were another important consideration. Conveying men and supplies

to the East was actually not a serious impediment in early 1915. British shipping

tonnage (due to the capture of many enemy ships) was greater than it had been at

the outbreak of war. With undersea assault by the submarine in its embryonic

stage, the ships would have gotten through. Getting the men and material away

from Salonika was another matter. But Lloyd George’s critics have exaggerated

the difficulties here. As the British official history of the Macedonian campaign

notes:

With regard to the communications, their deficiencies were emphasized in

many reports and appreciations; but, after all, for a Near Eastern port,

Salonika, with its good harbour easily made secure against submarines, with

three broad-gauge railways—that to Constantinople via Dorjan, that to

Belgrade, and that to Monastir—radiating from it, must be admitted to have

been unusually favorable to a great military enterprise.

The general staff was virtually invisible during the planning of military operations

in the Near East. Its head Sir James Wolfe Murray incredibly occupied a seat in

the highest councils of war without ever opening his mouth. Kitchener’s gnomic

and terse comments were no substitute for staff work. In fact, professional strategic

advice was so weak that Hankey became the government’s most important adviser

on strategy by default. Although sympathetic to Lloyd George’s Balkan plans,

Hankey believed that the Dardanelles campaign, once launched, should be

supported to the exclusion of the proposed Salonikan expedition.

If Lloyd George had had his way and preparations had begun as early as January,

C.R.M.F.Cruttwell points out, a Balkan campaign “could have begun in earnest

in June, when Italy [which joined the Entente in April 1915] would also have

begun to knock on the Isonzo. Austria’s position throughout the spring was so

critical that she could not have forestalled such an expedition by another attack

on Serbia, where she had already failed three times with severe loss.”

BALKANITE 29

Another serious objection to Lloyd George’s strategy has been succinctly stated

by Robertson: “We could not alter the geography of Europe which conferred upon

the enemy the advantage of a central position, and thereby enabled him to keep

one of his opponents in check with a part of his armies while he threw the bulk of

them into a decisive blow against another.”

Lloyd George was to have this

interior versus exterior lines argument thrown in his face many times. And it

carried great force. But it was not so valid an argument in 1915 as it was to be

later for a simple reason: with the start of its great spring offensive in Russia,

Germany was in no position to transfer her troops elsewhere. As Cruttwell writes:

From May onwards the Central Powers were committed to a great campaign

with the object of crippling Russia. An analysis of that campaign shows

clearly that it could not have been broken off before September. … Therefore

the West could have been organized defensively for that year without serious

risk. It could have been thoroughly insured in (say) the proportions of 5 to

4, while allowing for the employment of large forces elsewhere. For in fact

during this year Allied superiority in France amounted to nearly 7 to 4.

In retrospect, a case can be made for Lloyd George’s Balkan strategy. If the War

Council in January had chosen the Balkans over the Dardanelles and had been

able (a very big if) to enlist the support of the British and French generals for a

large Anglo-French expeditionary force, the war might have been fought to a

conclusion sooner. The armies of Greece, Rumania, Serbia, and Montenegro

would have swelled the Entente forces, and a thoroughly demoralized Austria-

Hungary might have been driven from the war. Isolated, Turkey might have sued

for peace. Russia, on the other hand, would have been greatly encouraged by its

link to the West. With help on the eastern front (Russia, after all, had to take on

Germany, Austria, and Turkey all at once) and with fresh supplies flowing to her

army, she might have remained in the war for the duration.

The above, obviously, is hypothetical. Despite the attraction of the Balkans to

Lloyd George in World War I and some British strategists in World War II, it can

not be proven that military operations there were a better route to victory over

Germany. What happened in the West in 1915, on the other hand, is history. The

French high command’s strategy of winning the war in twelve months prevailed,

resulting in the calamitous loss of life. When the slogging matches of the spring

and autumn were over, the French had suffered nearly 1,300,000 casualties,

inflicting upon the enemy some 506,000 casualties.

The relatively small British

Army, in support of the French strategy, suffered casualties even higher in

proportion. Nowhere was the front moved more than a few miles.

By March, when the most promising moment for intervention in the Balkans

had passed, Lloyd George’s Balkanite sentiments were being ignored by the war

leaders who mattered. Grey, a strong “Westerner,” believed that military

considerations should shape diplomacy rather than the reverse. He never favored

anything more than limited intervention at Salonika, and he steadfastly resisted

30 LLOYD GEORGE AND THE GENERALS

what he considered the Welshman’s unwarranted intrusions into the realm of

diplomacy. Kitchener placed primary emphasis on the western front and had

enough difficulty gathering troops he believed fit for combat for the Dardanelles

—let alone Lloyd George’s Balkan strategy. Meanwhile, Asquith continued his

leisurely direction of the War Council. Lloyd George, amazed that the prime

minister did not share his view of the urgency of the situation in the Balkans and

elsewhere, became increasingly critical of his leadership. As he once told Sir

George Riddell: “The P.M. is treating the war as if it were Home Rule or Welsh

Disestablishment. He does not recognise that the nation is fighting for its life.”

Perhaps it was Churchill who delivered the cruelist blow to Lloyd George’s

offensive strategy in the Balkans. On March 3, when the Dardanelles campaign

seemed assured of success, Churchill told the War Council that “we ought not to

employ more troops in this theatre of war than are absolutely essential in order to

induce the Balkan states to march. He was still of opinion that our line of strategy

was an advance in the north through Holland and the Baltic…. The operation in

the East should be regarded merely as an interlude.”

Without any support in the

War Council or from the military authorities, Lloyd George diverted his energy

into other areas, especially the production of munitions. His Balkan designs, it

appeared, seemed destined to be ignored even if the Dardanelles campaign

succeeded.

NOTES

1. Lloyd George To Asquith, December 31, 1914, Lloyd George MSS, C/6/11/24.

2. “Suggestions as to the Military Position,” January 1, 1915, quoted in Lloyd George,

War Memoirs, 1:219–22.

3. For Lloyd George’s correspondence with Noel Buxton, an important backbench

Liberal MP, see file C/6/7 in Lloyd George MSS. Also see Fry, Education of a

Statesman, pp. 279–86, and H.H.Asquith to Venetia Stanley, August 21, 1914,

quoted in Martin Gilbert, ed., Winston S.Churchill, vol. 3: Companion, Part l,

Documents: July 1914–April 1915 (1972), p. 49.

4. Entry of December 16, 1914, A Diary by Frances Stevenson, p. 18, and War Council,

December 16, 1914, CAB 42/1/6.

5. Lloyd George, War Memoirs, 1:223.

6. Ibid., p. 220.

7. Ibid., p. 226.

8. Memorandum by Hankey, December 28, 1914, Kitchener MSS, W.O. 159/2.

9. Churchill to Asquith, December 29, 1914, quoted in Winston S.Churchill, The World

Crisis, 4 vols. (1923–28), 2:30–31.

10. Martin Gilbert, Winston Churchill, vol. 3: The Challenge of War, 1914–1916 (1971),

p. 337.

11. Memorandum by Hankey, December 28, 1914, Kitchener MSS, W.O. 159/2.

12. War Council, January 7, 1915, CAB 42/1/11.

13. Hankey, Supreme Command, 1:261.

14. Ibid.

BALKANITE 31

15. War Council, January 8, 1915, CAB 42/1/12.

16. Captain Cyril Falls, Military Operations, Macedonia from the Outbreak of War to

the Spring of 1917 (1933), 1:83.

17. War Council, January 8, 1915, CAB 42/1/12.

18. Ibid.

19. Hankey, Supreme Command, 1:258.

20. Entry of January 21, 1915, A Diary by Frances Stevenson, p. 21.

21. Hankey, Supreme Command, 1:265.

22. War Council, January 13, 1915, CAB 42/1/16.

23. Entry of January 17, 1915, Lord Riddell’s War Diary, p. 52.

24. Entry of January 17, 1915, A Diary by Frances Stevenson, pp. 20–23.

25. Magnus, Kitchener, p. 290.

26. War Council, January 13, 1915, CAB 42/1/16.

27. War Office, “Indications of a New Austro-German Offensive Against Serbia,”

January 21, 1915, Lloyd George MSS, C/16/4/1.

28. Asquith to George V, January 21, 1915, CAB 37/123/33.

29. Asquith, Memories and Reflections, 2:67–68.

30. Greek Minister to M.Venizelos, January 21, 1915, Lloyd George MSS, C/8/7/1.

31. War Council, January 13, 1915, CAB 42/1/16.

32. Asquith, Memories and Reflections;, 2:68–69, and Esher Diary, January 22, 1915,

2/13.

33. George H.Cassar, The French and the Dardanelles: A Study of Failure in the Conduct

of War (1971), pp. 35–40.

34. Esher Diary, January 24, 1915, 2/13.

35. Subcommittee of Imperial Defence Committee, January 28, 1915, CAB 42/1/27.

36. War Council, January 28, 1915, CAB 42/1 /28.

37. Lloyd George to Kitchener, January 29, 1915, Lloyd George MSS, C/5/7/14.

38. Kitchener to Lloyd George, January 29, 1915, Lloyd George MSS, C/5/7/12.

39. Lloyd George to Kitchener, January 29, 1915, Lloyd George MSS, C/5/7/13.

40. Churchill to Kitchener, January 31, 1915, quoted in Churchill, World Crisis, 2:176–

77.

41. Lloyd George to Churchill, January 29, 1915, quoted in Gilbert, Companion, Part

l, Documents: July 1914–April 1915, p. 472.

42. Michael Palairet to Lloyd George (British Ambassador Sir Francis Bertie’s account

of Lloyd George’s conversation with Poincaré inclosed), February 5, 1915, Lloyd

George MSS, C/3/6/2.

43. Note, “Decision at Council Meeting this Morning,” February 4, 1915, ibid.

44. Lloyd George to Grey, February 7, 1915, Lloyd George MSS, C/4/1 /16; also see

entries of February 3–4, 1915, Lady Algernon Gordon Lennox, ed., The Diary of

Lord Bertie of Thames, 1914–1918, 2 vols. (n.d.), 1:107–9.

45. Entry of February 7, 1915, Lord Riddell’s War Diary, p. 61.

46. Entry of February 8, 1915, A Diary by Frances Stevenson, p. 29.

47. Robertson has written: “Mr. Lloyd George once said that he had explained his plan

to me when on a visit to G.H.Q. in France…and that I had agreed with it. If so, I

must have entirely misunderstood the account he gave me of it….” Sir William

Robertson, Soldiers and Statesmen, 1914–1918, 2 vols. (1926), 2:88.

48. War Council, February 9, 1915, CAB 42/1 /33.

49. Asquith, Memories and Reflections, 2:15.

32 LLOYD GEORGE AND THE GENERALS

50. War Council, February 16, 1915, CAB 42/1/35.

51. Ibid., February 26, 1915, CAB 42/1/47.

52. Ibid., February 24, 1915, CAB 42/1/42.

53. Lloyd George, “Some Future Considerations on the Conduct of the War,” February

22, 1915, CAB 42/1/39.

54. War Council, February 24, 1915, CAB 42/1/42.

55. Lloyd George, “Some Future Considerations …”

56. War Council, February 26, 1915, CAB 42/1/47.

57. Asquith to Venetia Stanley, February 26, 1915, quoted in Gilbert, Companion, Part I,

Documents: July 1914–April 1915, pp. 577–78.

58. Hankey Diary, March 6, 1915, 1/1.

59. Nancy Maurice, ed., The Maurice Case from the Papers of Major-General Sir

Frederick Maurice, with an appreciation by Major-General Sir Edward Spears

(1972), p. 5. Spears is wrong. Lloyd George knew some French, enough anyway to

compose love notes in that language to Miss Stevenson.

60. Memorandum by Eustace Percy, October 11, 1915, F.O. 800/95.

61. C.R.M.F.Cruttwell, A History of the Great War, 1914–1918 (1936), p. 140, and C.J.

Lowe and M.L.Dockrill, British Foreign Policy, 1914–1922, vol. 2: The Mirage of

Power (1972), pp. 169–207.

62. Robertson, Soldiers and Statesmen, 2:88.

63. B.H.Liddell Hart, The Real War, 1914–1918 (paperback edn., 1930), p. 120.

64. Falls, Military Operations, Macedonia from the Outbreak of War to the Spring of

1917, 1:83.

65. For the most succinct and revealing discussion of how military policy was formulated

during this period, see Gooch, Plans for War, pp. 299–330.

66. C.R.M.F.Cruttwell, the Role of British Strategy in the Great War (1936), p. 39.

67. Robertson, Soldiers and Statesmen, 2:87.

68. Cruttwell, British Strategy in the Great War, p. 38.

69. These are Churchill’s calculations, and the difference between Allied and German

losses in his account may be on the high side. But, whatever figures one accepts, it

seems obvious that French and British losses were considerably higher than those

suffered by the Germans. Churchill, World Crisis, 3:41.

70. Entry of August 20, 1915, Lord Riddell’s War Diary, p. 118.

71. War Council, March 3, 1915, CAB 42/2/3.

BALKANITE 33

Munitions, Compulsion, and the Fall of Serbia

IN 1915, Lloyd George’s daily life had not been much altered by the great war.

To be sure, like many of his countrymen, he glanced nervously at the sky. In

January, Berlin had first sent her rigid airship, the Zeppelin, against Britain,

bombing Yarmouth on the Norfolk coast. In the months to come, these huge and

menacing gas bags struck terror in the hearts of many civilians. When these sky

raiders appeared, workers fled factories and railways were thrown into confusion.

Lloyd George shared his countrymen’s concern about the Zeppelin, spending

many nights away from 11 Downing Street, the official residence of the chancellor

of the exchequer. He commuted to a modest house at Walton Heath, which had

been given him by his friend and confidant, Lord Riddell. A frequent passenger

in his car was his dog, Zulu. Once his pet had been stunned by a passing car; but

much to Lloyd George’s relief and amusement, Zulu had first been revived and

then befuddled by a dose of brandy. Lloyd George’s commuting was the occasion

for one of his favorite stories. Returning to Walton Heath after dinner in London,

his car broke down and his chauffeur got out to make repairs. Without the

chauffeur’s knowledge, Lloyd George also left the car. To the Welshman’s

dismay, the chauffeur made the necessary repairs and then drove away without

noticing that his passenger was missing. Lloyd George—or so he alleged— then

made his way in the dark to a great house which turned out to be an asylum. Attired

in an evening cape and opera hat, he explained his predicament to a man who

answered his knock at the door and then identified himself as the chancellor of

the exchequer. The man’s response was: “Certainly. Do come in. The rest of the

cabinet have been expecting you.”

Lloyd George was often joined at Walton Heath by his private secretary and

mistress, Frances Stevenson. A graduate of the University of London in Classics,

Miss Stevenson had fallen “under the sway of his electric personality” the first

time she saw him.

She became his private secretary at the treasury in 1912 “on

his own terms, which were in direct conflict with my essentially Victorian

upbringing.”

Bright, efficient, sensitive, and attrac tive, she was a loyal and warm

companion to Lloyd George, who was over twenty-five years her senior. Their

relationship took an alarming turn in February 1915, when Frances became ill and

believed that she was pregnant.

Lloyd George placed her at Walton Heath under

the care of a faithful servant. Either it was all a mistake or she suffered a

miscarriage. There was to be no politically embarrassing child.

This relationship was kept from the general public by a protective press and his

friends accepted it. Some of his political foes, however, believed that this affair

was proof that he was unfit for membership to decent society. To them, he was

the “Goat.” Stories about his womanizing had followed him throughout his

political career. Though exaggerated, these stories were real enough. In defense

of his wayward ways, Lloyd George once brazenly put the following

rationalization to his wife:

You say I have my weakness. So has anyone that ever lived & the greater

the man the greater the weakness. It is only insipid, wishy washy fellows

that have no weaknesses….

You must make allowances for the waywardness & wildness of a man of

my type. What if I were drunk as well? I can give you two samples you

know of both the weaknesses in one man & the wives do their best under

these conditions. What about Asquith & Birkenhead? I could tell you stories

of both—women & wine.

His wife, Margaret, made allowances. Passionately Welsh and uncomfortable in

the hustle and bustle of London, she spent much of her time in her beloved Wales

away from her adulterous husband. There was never a formal separation, which

might have damaged his political career.

At fifty-two, Lloyd George’s appearance was impressive. Although of moderate

height, he had a powerful build which exuded strength. His eyes were blue and

his hair, which he allowed to grow long, was rapidly turning white. Of a sociable

disposition, he was relaxed and charming. With a drink and pipe (or cigar) in hand,

he could dominate any social gathering with his wit, dynamism, and genius as a

storyteller. What is sometimes overlooked is that he was an excellent listener as

well. He constantly pumped his friends and associates for ideas and seldom acted

without consulting others. His outgoing and personable ways were a great asset

for they often enabled him to lower the guard of his most bitter enemies. There

were few British politicians who could be better company.

His tastes were, for the most part, thoroughly middle class. He shunned

ceremony and preferred simple food—beans and bacon were among his favorites.

For relaxation, he liked drives through the countryside, long walks, singing, and

golf. Britain had many better golfers, but few who were more avid. Neither the

war, winter, nor the king were allowed to interrupt his golfing routine. Once the

king requested an interview with him at Buckingham Palace on a Saturday

morning. “‘Damn the King!’” he exploded, “‘Saturday is the only day I have to

play golf. I can’t t play on Sunday for I mustn’t shock my Nonconformist friends

on too many points at the same time!’”

Lloyd George’s dynamism and zest for winning the war discomforted some of

his Liberal colleagues. Although he deplored the unprecedented death and

LLOYD GEORGE AND THE GENERALS 35

destruction of the war, he did not draw back from committing himself to the

unlimited conflict. If more men and high-explosive shells were needed, they must

be obtained. Nothing must stand in the way. If necessary, the state must play an

ever-increasing role in mobilizing the country for war. New weapons as well as

new forms of warfare were readily considered by him. A suggestion in the War

Council that a blight might be spread over Germany’s crops got his enthusiastic

support. When Churchill opposed what he termed “poisoning” food, Lloyd George

ingeniously riposted that “a blight did not poison but merely deteriorated the

crop.”

German civilians would starve nonetheless.

Lloyd George’s drive and his quick and flexible mind involved him in a bitter

clash with the professionals in the War Office over the production of munitions.

Having shown an interest in munitions as early as September 1914, Lloyd George

was convinced that the hidebound and unimaginative approach of the soldiers to

the production of munitions might lose the war. The War Office’s policy, he later

noted, “seemed even to be that of preparing, not for the next war, but for the last

one.”

When he paid a visit to Woolwich Arsenal shortly after the war began, he

“found stacks of empty shells which were being slowly and tediously filled, one

at a time, with ladles by hand from cauldrons of seething fluid.”

The War Office’s initial failure to deliver an adequate supply of munitions could

hardly be blamed on Kitchener, who inherited a system incapable of keeping up

with the demands of modern war. But Kitchener was reluctant to accept what he

considered interference by Lloyd George in the War Office’s domain; and he

consequently became the target for Lloyd George’s aggressive and unrelenting

efforts to reorganize and increase the production of munitions. Earlier, Lloyd

George had thought that Kitchener was Britain’s most able soldier because he had

given support, indecisive and muddled though it had been, to “Eastern” ventures.

Now, however, he thought him “without imagination” and “distrustful of all

civilian interference.”

A showdown occurred in this civil-military struggle in

early March. In a “truly royal row,” as Asquith described it, neither Kitchener nor

Lloyd George would bend. Both threatened resignation.

The thunder and lightning in Whitehall abated somewhat in early April. Asquith

appointed a cabinet committee under Lloyd George’s chairmanship to deal with

munitions. Kitchener, however, created an Armaments Output Committee within

the War Office. Continued conflict was inevitable as the professional soldier

learned to cooperate with the civilians under Lloyd George. However, Kitchener’s

acceptance that Lloyd George had a role to play in munitions, limited though it

might be, did improve relations between the two men. On April 21, Lloyd George

even defended the War Office’s delivery of munitions before the House. Within

three weeks he was to regret these words of praise.

Lloyd George’s renewed anger at Britain’s dominant war lord is explained by

two unexpected visitors whom Lloyd George received on May 12. They were Sir

John French’s secretary, Brinsley Fitzgerald, and one of his aides de camp,

Captain Frederick Guest. Their commander had sent them to talk with Lloyd

George and the Unionist leaders Arthur Balfour and Bonar Law. Armed with

36 MUNITIONS, COMPULSION, AND THE FALL OF SERBIA