I believe that from the moment he
decided the war was a right one and must be pressed to victory he
concentrated the whole of his heart and soul, all of his bewildering
and compelling properties, to the task of securing victory. And that
the remarkable success he attained, first in the sphere of finance,
then in the provision of munitions, thirdly in the raising of armies
and general organization for battle, led him quickly to a vision of the
whole contest, a vision unshared by his colleagues, but of dazzling
clearness to himself.

His whole being, designed for the emergencies of combat, quivered and
thrilled as he saw the hundred directions in which urgency and rapidity
and ruthlessness could forge the weapons of success. I believe he was
completely selfless about the matter. He made efforts to touch various
spheres of war organization with the white-hot spirit which possessed
himself, and became partly the terror, partly the admiration, of those
among whom he moved. And then, realizing more and more, week by week,
what he regarded as the inertia in the departments that ran the
country, and seeing the importance of stirring the feelings of his
principal Cabinet colleagues to wholesale, passionate, fear-nothing
strokes which should bring the end of the war within sight, there grew
upon him resistlessly the thought that he must himself secure supreme
control of the war in Britain. I believe the idea took hold of him,
not from any vulgar motive, but in the way that religion grows upon a
man, possessing him utterly, leaving him heedless of the criticism
directed against his personal aims.

What was the system he was up against? In the British Cabinet each
Minister is the head of his own department, and in normal times the
Prime Minister doesn't interfere in the departments, although, as
chairman of the Cabinet, his consent has to be given to any big
national policy initiated by another Minister. Mr. Asquith had strong
and clever men around him, and, quite apart from the fact that he was
the most chivalrous of chiefs, he trusted their capacity. Strong and
capable as they were, they had not the flashing genius of Lloyd George,
certainly had not his genius for war, implying large decisions and
great risks. They plodded along and threshed out plans and put some of
them into execution. To Lloyd George both the plans and the way they
were carried out were half-hearted. To him there was always delay,
never the stark