ster-General of the Ordnance had undertaken was still, speaking
generally, rather on the footing of the building of which the
foundations are only beginning to be laid even if the excavations have
been completed and the debris has been cleared away. There was as yet
comparatively little to show. The results did not begin to make
themselves apparent until a date when the Ministry of Munitions had
already come into being some time. That Department of State gained the
benefit. Its Chief took the credit for work in connection with which
it had for all practical purposes no responsibility beyond that of
issuing what predecessors had arranged for. The full product of the
contracts which the Master-General of the Ordnance had placed, of the
development he had given to existing Government establishments, and of
the setting up of entirely new ones by him, with Lord Kitchener ever
using his driving power and his fertility of resource in support, only
materialized in the winter of 1915-16, at a stage when the Ministry of
Munitions had been already full six months in existence.

If the army in general failed to understand the position, it is hardly
to be wondered at that Parliament and the less well-informed section
of the Press should not understand the position, and that the public
should have been deceived. Very shortly after the Newcastle speech,
and no doubt largely in consequence of it, the Northcliffe Press stunt
of May 1915 on the subject of shell shortage was initiated. Up to a
certain point that stunt was not only fully justified, but was
actually advantageous to the country. It made the nation acquainted
with the fact that our troops were suffering severely from
insufficiency of munitions. It stirred the community up, and that in
itself was an excellent thing. But it succeeded somehow at the same
time in conveying the impression that this condition of affairs was
due to neglect, and in consequence it misled public opinion and did
grave injustice. We must assume that, owing to fundamental ignorance
of the problems involved, to a neglect to keep touch with industrial
conditions, and to lack of acquaintance with the technicalities of
munitions manufacture, these newspapers (which usually contrive to be
extremely well informed, thanks to the great financial resources at
their back) were totally unaware that a sudden expansion of output on
a great scale was an impossibility; to suggest that this aspect of the
problem was deli