A Spectator' s Notebook
THERE is so far very little in the nature of fireworks about Mr. Lloyd George's reminiscences, which the Daily Telegraph is at present publishing. Every view of any aspect of the War from a new angle is some contribution to the objective history that will some day be. written. But Mr. Lloyd George is the last man to look to for the purely objective. He is in effect stating his own case in the matter of the long and embittered munitions con- troversy in the first twelve months of the War. It is very desirable to have it stated, and by the first Minister of Munitions himself, but it is well .to remember that most of the other chief actors in the affair—Kitchener, French, von Donop, Asquith, are dead and incapable of all re- joinder. The last thing I would suggest is that Mr. Lloyd George has taken any advantage of that. But there are two sides to most questions; and it does not follow that because only one side is stated in this case no other side exists. The War Office, I judge, would claim that Mr. Lloyd George, appointed Minister of Munitions in May, 1915, reaped early and considerable benefit from the arrangements already made for the expansion of the out- put of shells. It is undoubtedly the case that the output did expand very soon after the new Minister had taken office, but it has always been .understood that the first Lloyd George shells properly so described were fired at the Somme in July, 1916.
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