step-by-step procedure, and found reason for
anger in the officials and Ministers who thought the war ought to be
conducted according to book. There has yet to be told the full story,
not only of all the obstacles which Lloyd George had to remove from his
path in organizing the munition supply, but also of the hindrances
which fettered the prosecution of the war as a whole with every ounce
of strength, every shilling of money, at the disposal of the British
nation.

I can imagine that Lloyd George was not a very pleasant colleague in
the Cabinet during these intervening months. When the records come to
be given it will be seen that he was constantly and furiously striking
at the iron bars of custom and routine, that he was trying to turn the
lip service of individuals to practical service. At times he reached
the edge of desperate action.

It was in the thick of his other work that a crisis arose in South
Wales, where the miners, numbering two hundred thousand, responsible
for the supply of coal to the British navy, refused to work unless the
employers conceded certain demands about pay and conditions. The
seriousness of the position was appalling. The president of the Board
of Trade, Mr. Runciman, struggled hard to bring about a settlement. He
failed. Something had to be done and done at once. The country,
looking around for a man to come to the rescue, fixed on Lloyd George.
He left the Ministry of Munitions in Whitehall, took a train down to
South Wales, had a straight talk with the employers, another straight
talk with the men, and in one day settled affairs and got the men to
continue their work. I cite this as a passing illustration of how
Lloyd George was Britain's man-of-all-work, and of how the nation had
to turn to him practically every time it was in difficulty.

While struggling to speed up the Cabinet on a hundred matters Lloyd
George became impressed with the necessity of increasing the size of
the British army, already millions strong. The voluntary system had
hitherto been relied on, and there was strong opposition, both in the
Cabinet and in the country, to tentative proposals for conscription.
Lloyd George took an early opportunity of showing that he was on the
side of the conscriptionists. There was an outburst of protests, but
it proved of no avail, and it was largely through Lloyd George that
conscription in Britain became an established fact. Even then he was
by no means satisfied w