point-Who is right? Who is wrong? They are both wrong. There is a good deal to be said for and there is a vast amount to be said against compulsory arbitration, but during the war the Government ought to have power to settle all these differences, and the work should go on.

The workman ought to get more. Very well, let the Government find it out and give it to him. If he ought not, then he ought not to throw up his tools. The country cannot afford it. It is disaster, and I do not believe the moment this comes home to workmen and employers they will refuse to comply with the urgent demand of the Government. There must be no delay.

This war is not going to be fought mainly on the battlefields of Belgium and Poland. It is going to be fought in the workshops of France and Great Britain.

The men, who had thrown over their responsible leaders for an executive committee of extremists, were very little moved by his exhortations. But after remaining out for a few days longer, in order to show their independence, they gradually returned to work. Strikes, however, continued in other parts of the country.

On March 9 Mr. Lloyd George took the House of Commons by surprise by producing a new Defence of the Realm Bill, the most far-reaching of the series. In introducing the measure, the Chancellor of the Exchequer insisted on the vital importance to the country of an increased output of munitions of war. The Government had already obtained power to take over any works in which war material was being produced. Power was now sought to take over in addition works which might be adapted for

that purpose. There was no opposition to

the proposal, the only feeling being one of surprise that the Government should not have made it half a year before. It is probable that few members of the House, and certain that few people in the country, realized the new cause of anxiety with which Mr. Lloyd George's Bill was concerned, and which, together with its own internal differences of opinion, were to lead to a reconstitution of the Government. The House had been recently agitating itself about such questions as inoculation, the employment of child-labour on farms, the censorship, a demand by the Labour Party that the Government should prevent the continuance of the rise in the necessities of life," and an alleged unbusinesslike arrangement in connexion with the purchase of timber. On February 8 Mr. Tennant, Under-Secretary of State for War, had assured the House that "recruiting had been very satisfactory." "Of course," he added, "it varied from week to week, and possibly at the present moment if a little more energy were to be put into recruiting it would not be out of place." On the whole there had been no cause for discontent.

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still less for disquiet. "But we want more men." He went on to invite the trade unions to help the Government "to organize the forces of labour." By this he meant not only the relaxation of restrictions for the period of the war and for Government contracts, but the releasing of men for the Army by the substitution, wherever possible, of women. "I do not say," he mildly observed, "that it is a possible thing to do. I only throw it out tentatively in the hope that something may occur to hon. gentlemen, and that they may be able to assist us in that matter." Appeals for men and tentative suggestions to trade unionsthese were the preoccupations of the Government at this period of the war. But the real need of the moment, as the House was soon to discover, was not men but munitions.

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On February 4 a Committee on Production had been appointed to report on the best way to get a full output from the engineering and shipbuilding establishments working for the Government. On February 20 the Committee reported that it had been represented to them very strongly by both the Admiralty and the War Office that there was a present and continuously increasing need for shells and fuses." It was Mr. Bonar Law who was the first to express, on March 1, a doubt whether in the matter of munitions the Government was doing everything it could to end the war. A few days later, when Mr. Lloyd George introduced his Bill, Mr. Bonar Law returned to the point. The Committee on Production had in the interval found it necessary to emphasize very strongly the need of a rapid and continuous increase in the output of all munitions of war. But neither the House nor the country had any evidence as to the exact position of affairs. It had trusted the Government, and the Government had concealed the truth.

On March 15 Lord Kitchener made his first appearance in the House of Lords since Parliament had reassembled, and delivered a grave and important speech. For the first time in his public utterances since the war began he showed that the supply of men was not in itself sufficient for victory. He dealt almost entirely with the output of war material and the necessity of making the best possible use of the available machinery. He pointed out that unless the whole nation cooperated "not only in supplying the manhood of the country to serve in our ranks, but also in

supplying the necessary arms, ammunition, and equipment, successful operations in the various parts of the world in which we are engaged will be very seriously hampered and delayed." Notwithstanding the efforts made to meet requirements, he said,

We have unfortunately found that the output is not only not equal to our necessities, but does not fulfil our expectations. . . . I can only say that the supply of war material at the present moment and for the next two or three months is causing me very serious anxiety, and I wish all those engaged in the manufacture and supply of these stores to realize that it is absolutely essential not only that the arrears in the deliveries of our munitions of war should be wiped off, but that the output of every round of ammunition is of the utmost importance and has a large influence on our operations in the field.

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He laid stress on the various causes which had contributed to the shortcomings absence, irregular time-keeping, slack work, "in some cases the temptations of drink," on more than one occasion the restrictions of trade unions." But there was no suggestion that these defects had been accompanied by failure on the part of the Government to make the best use of the material which lay ready to their hands. As a matter of fact, the Government had hitherto sought to meet the demand merely by giving huge orders to the great armament firms and leaving them to make what arrangements they could with sub-contractors, as they had

Con

been accustomed to do in peace-time. sequently many firms were trying to do work for which they were very imperfectly equipped, and delays in delivery were inevitable. Meanwhile the columns of the Press teemed with the complaints of manufacturers who, filled with a patriotic desire to help to the best of their ability, were discouraged by months of red tape correspondence, fruitless journeys, and failure to get either instructions or orders. No wonder that the impression had got about among the men that there could not, after all, be any particular urgency.

Mr. Lloyd George's reply to the criticism that the Government should have brought in the Bill before was that he did not think it

would have been justified "unless they felt that they could not get on very much farther without it." To this Mr. Bonar Law, with a far truer sense of the feeling of the country, retorted that the powers sought under the Bill could have been obtained just as readily six months previously as now. Mr. Lloyd George told the House, as he had told the workmen, that we could not conduct war and still allow business to be conducted as usual." It is certain, on the other hand, that the tendency to conduct "business as usual might have been counteracted from

the first if the Government had been open with the manufacturers.

From this moment, however, Mr. Lloyd George decided to take the business men into his confidence, and announced that the idea was to get a business man- -"a good strong business man with some push and go in him -at the head of the organization. The first step was the appointment, announced on April 7, of a War Office Committee "to take the necessary steps to provide such additional labour as may be required to secure that the supply of munitions of war shall be sufficient to meet all requirements." The announcement, after nearly a month's delay, caused a lively disappointment, not because the energetic shipowner, Mr. G. M. Booth, whose name was most prominently associated with the Committee, was not a highly efficient man, but because it was clear that the coach had not yet been lifted out of the old rut. But there was little pretence that the appointment of the Booth Committee had solved the problem. It appeared that all that had happened was the creation of a recruiting agency for the armament works to compete for men with Lord Kitchener's recruiting agents.

Parliament took its Easter holiday, and the interval was filled by a new campaign, which, without seriously affecting matters, for the moment distracted public attention. At a conference with representatives of trade unions on March 17 Mr. Lloyd George announced his intention to impose a limitation of profits on works controlled by the Government, and requested that, in return, the workmen should abandon stoppages of work (pending the reference of disputes to an arbitration tribunal) and should suspend, where necessary, all rules and regulations tending to restrict output. But he went on to lay stress on reports which he had received from the Admiralty and War Office to the effect that excessive drinking on the part of the workmen (admittedly a minority) in some districts was gravely interfering with the work. latter idea was taken up throughout the country, and for a time it seemed, to judge from reported utterances, that drink was really at the bottom of all the labour troubles. Mr. Lloyd George himself went so far as to say: "Drink is doing us more damage in the war than all the German submarines put together," and again, "We are fighting Germany, Austria,

The

and Drink; and, as far as I can see, the greatest of these three deadly foes is Drink." Ever anxious to sacrifice himself even in minor matters, for the common good, the King on March 30 wrote to the Chancellor of the Exchequer that "if it were deemed advisable he would be prepared to set the example by giving up all alcoholic liquor himself and issuing orders against its consumption in the Royal Household." His Majesty's letter, which was followed on April 6 by the issue of the orders in question, received an immediate voluntary response from the country and Empire. For a while it looked as if the Government contemplated drastic legislation in the direction of prohibition.

But, as The Times insisted, the drink question had been allowed to overshadow the real problem that of producing war material. Not compulsory self-denial but an entire reorganization of war work was needed. No attempt had been made to utilize to the full the national resources. Factories employed on Government work had been over-driven, while others which might have been brought into use had been neglected. The loss of time and slackness might in some degree be attributable to drink; they were far more certainly due to overwork and fatigue. The primary reason why the country was short of munitions was not drink at all. The real remedy was to deal with the muddle at the War Office and to put an end to the tradition that only soldiers could control war manufactures. It was not surprising that the net result of the drink campaign, in spite of an explanatory letter from Mr. Lloyd George, was to annoy the sober workmen (the vast majority), who had been doing their best from the beginning, by confusing them with the weaker brethren for whom unusually high wages had facilitated existing habits of intemperance.

On April 10 the formation of the North-East Coast Armaments Committee, on which the men, the employers, and the Government Departments were represented, was hailed with public relief. It was heartily welcomed at a meeting of 21 engineering and shipbuilding societies at Newcastle, which sent a resolution to the Prime Minister containing the bluff assertion: "We do not want any more speeches about the failings of the workers, the employers or the Government; we want to pull together and get on with it. You may tell Lord Kitchener that we shall deliver the goods."

A few days later a great step in advance was made. A new committee was appointed, presided over by the Chancellor of the Exchequer himself and including representatives of the Admiralty, the War Office, the Treasury, the Board of Trade, and others. The first task of. the committee was to ascertain the full extent of the problem, the second to map out the whole country and draw every available factory and workshop into the scheme. The great merit of the scheme was that it left the War Office free to concentrate upon the sufficiently overwhelming task of organizing and training the new armies. There was danger, on the other hand, lest the Government should imagine that by the mere appointment of committees it had done all that was needed. What was at least equally essential was that the country should be told the truth about the

war.

BARBED WIRE These obstacles have to be

The truth was, though it was not fully revealed until May 14, when the Military Correspondent of The Times explained the failure of the British attacks in the districts of Fromelles and Richebourg, that "the want of an unlimited supply of high explosives was a fatal bar to our success." Public opinion at length awoke to the fact that the shell problem was far more vital than all the rest put together. Not only was the Army provided with insufficient shells of any kind, but it especially lacked the kind best suited to the character of the work in hand. It needed the man-killing shrapnel, indeed, but far more did it need the trench-battering high explosive. The Government had had plenty of warning. As long before as September 18 a well-informed correspondent, in a letter to The Times, had pointed out the absence of any systematic attempt to secure a maximum production of