the Government have
backed him up? It was the handiwork of a very big man.

Still, this was after all a quite minor detail in the constructive
labours undertaken by one of the most illustrious public servants of
our time. His paramount claim to the gratitude of his countrymen rests
upon his nimble perception of the nature of the task which he had been
suddenly called upon to perform, and upon the speed with which he set
every channel in motion to accomplish his purpose. He realized, as it
seemed by instinct, that this contest was going to be a very big
business indeed, an incomparably bigger business than these topmost
military authorities who had been in the confidence of the Government
before the blow fell had any idea of. It is no exaggeration to say
that in this matter he was a giant amongst the pigmies. He grasped the
truth at once that this world war was to be a protracted struggle, a
struggle in which the Entente would not gain the upper hand unless a
tremendous effort was to be put forward by the British Empire. He saw
almost at a glance that our military system such as it was, and as
previously devised with a view to war conditions, provided what
represented numerically no more than an insignificant fraction of the
host which would ultimately be needed to give us victory. He
furthermore--and it is well to insist upon this thus early, in view of
fabrications which have been put about on the subject of
munitions--clearly discerned the need for a huge expansion in the
country's powers of output in respect to war material; so that under
his impulse existing factories and establishments were developed on
generous lines, and arrangements were instantly set on foot for
creating entirely new factories and establishments. The result was
that, after a lean and discouraging period for the troops in the
field, the needs of an army which was ten times as strong as the army
which soldiers of light and leading had been contemplating before war
broke out, were being adequately met within fifteen months of the
British ultimatum to Germany.

Within the War Office itself he certainly made things hum. In pre-war,
plain-clothes days, those messengers of distinguished presence--dignity
personified in their faultlessly-fitting official frock-coats and red
waistcoats--had lent a tone of respectability to the precincts,
compensating for the unfortunate impression conveyed by
Adjutant-Generals and such like who perambulated the corrid