The goods
John Grigg
Arms and the Wizard: Lloyd George and the Ministry of Munitions, 1915-1916 R. 'J. Q. Adams (Cassell £8.50) In May 1915 the last Liberal government was replaced by a coalition under the Liberal Prime Minister, Asquith, and one of the most striking features of the new administration was that Lloyd George, who had been Chancellor of the Exchequer for seven Years, took on the entirely new job of Minister of Munitions (without, however, vacating No. 11 Downing Street). The aPPointment was a great challenge, because the so-called 'shells scandal' — the shortage of ammunition on the Western front — was beginning to arouse public anxiety. Lloyd George was one of the very few People who realised from the first that the war would not be over quickly but would be long and uniquely demanding; and he could also see that it would be waged on an unprecedented scale. Even in peacetime he had felt that the role of the state needed to be Much enlarged, and had himself done quite a lot to enlarge it. But for the requirements of a modern war it was obvious to him that Britain's traditional machinery of government was pathetically inadequate. As Minister of Munitions he introduced a degree of state control over industry that Would have seemed unthinkable before the War, more especially to old-style Liberals, ,arid at the same time brought a number of unsinessmen into the new department as senior executives. This followed naturally from his earlier readiness to consult such People when he was President of the Board
of Trade, and anticipated his appointment of businessmen to ministerial posts in his Own coalition eighteen months later.
Though his extraordinary achievement at the Munitions Ministry is very fully documented, it has hitherto received scant attention from his biographers. In one recent life, for instance, only eight out of eight hundred pages are devoted to it. Yet it
deserves careful study not only as one of the best examples of his improvising, innovating genius at work, but also for the light that it throws on the evolution of British government. Now, at last, justice has been done to the subject by a young American historian, Professor R. J. Q. Adams.
I should say at once that Professor Adams is a friend of mine, and that I had the pleasure of reading and commenting on his book in typescript. But I honestly believe that I should not be writing about it any differently if the author and his work were quite unknown to me. He has told a fascinating story at just about the right length and with the right amount of detail. He gives plenty of information but does not get bogged down in a morass of technicalities. For anyone remotely interested in the subject the book is an easy as well as a necessary read.
It shows that Lloyd George and his Ministry really did deliver the goods. When the war broke out in August 1914 the BEF took to France 897 eighteen-pounders and 169 4.5-inch howitzers (to mention just two types of weapon). By June 1915 the numbers had been augmented by 723 and 160 respectively. But a year later the production of eighteen-pounders had increased by 171times, that of 4.5-inch howitzers by 27 times, while what had previously been a year's output of shells for them was being produced in a fortnight or three weeks. As the Army expanded with the flood of vol
unteers and, later, of conscripts, so the Ministry kept it supplied with guns and ammunition on the same vast scale.
But its function was not only to put British industry on a war footing and to mobilise its resources for the work that needed to be done. After a struggle with the Ordnance Department of the War Office, Lloyd George wrested from it the responsibility 'for designs, patterns and specifications, for the testing of arms and ammunitions, and for the examination of inventions bearing on such munitions'. Two outstanding consequences of this were the Stokes mortar and the tank, which Professor Adams describes as 'the two greatest developments in land warfare of the war'. These inventions were seized upon and rapidly developed because Lloyd George and his chosen team were willing, as the War Office was not, 'to support and nurture unorthodox solutions'.
The Ministry's work also had important social side-effects. As the labour-force in armament factories was increasingly 'diluted' by the recruitment of women, sanitary and welfare conditions had to be improved. It was soon compulsory for all establishments under government control to have a canteen, and the Ministry's wel fare section — under Seebohm Rowntree — became responsible for providing many other amenities, such as nurseries for the children of working mothers. There can be little doubt that the Ministry gave a major
boost to the emancipation of women, a cause in which Lloyd George had long believed. At the same time many changes brought in primarily for the benefit of female `dilutees' were of equal benefit to male workers, and contributed to a general advance in social standards.
Lloyd George did not escape trouble with the trade unions, though in principle their representatives agreed that many cherished freedoms had to be suspended for the duration. Skilled male workers inevitably reacted against what they saw as the introduction of female and unskilled 'blacklegs', and the virtual direction of labour which the Government obtained through Lloyd George's Munitions of War Act. Among other things, this measure outlawed strikes and lockouts, but strikes nevertheless occurred from time to time. Lloyd George usually managed to win people round when he made a direct appeal to them, but on Christmas Day 1915 he failed conspicuously at a meeting of Clydeside trade unionists in St Andrew's Hall, Glasgow. Professor Adams says that his reception there was the most hostile he had experienced since the tumultous days of his opposition to the Boer war. Though the immediate crisis was gradually overcome, the incident was a grave portent for his future relations with labour.
During his thirteen months as Minister of Munitions he in many ways transformed the theory and practice of government in Britain. When he took over the job his staff consisted only of a permanent secretary, a parliamentary secretary and two private secretaries. His office contained only two tables, a chair and some mirrors on the wall.
When he left, the Ministry had about 5,000 employees, and they were not wasting their time. It was a most powerful and effective instrument which he had, literally, created from scratch, and his title as 'the man who won the war' rests as solidly upon that achievement as upon anything that he later did as prime minister.
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