"Expeditionary Force"
consisted of six divisions, but a vague sort of
organization for a seventh had also existed on
paper.]

But that line apparently did not suit the book of the Minister of
Munitions. He must have been well aware that a great improvement in
output was already beginning to take place, and that, thanks entirely
to the labours of the Ordnance Department of the War Office and of
Lord Kitchener, the output would within a few months reach huge
figures. If it were represented to the House, and through the House
to the country, that this question of munitions had been grossly
neglected up to the time that he took charge, and if it became
apparent subsequently that from the hour of his becoming Munitions
Minister a rapid improvement set in, then the thanks of the nation
would go out to him and he would be canonized. This is the only
explanation that I can find for a most discreditable incident. For he
made no attempt to meet the attack, and he contrived to convey the
impression by his remarks that the attack was fully justified. I have,
moreover, good reason for believing that on that day there was present
on the Treasury bench a representative of the War Office, not a
Cabinet Minister, who was ready and willing to defend the
Master-General of the Ordnance and who was acquainted with the facts,
but that the Minister of Munitions, being in charge of the House,
refused to sanction his speaking. Happily such occurrences are rare in
the public life of this country.

That reply of Mr. Lloyd George's on the 1st of July 1915--anybody can
look it up in Hansard--left an uncommonly nasty taste in the mouth.
The taste was made none the less nasty by his unblushing assumption on
later occasions of the credit for the improvement in munitions output
that took place from the summer of 1915 onwards. In my own case,
although I was nowise concerned with munitions output then, neither
pleasant association with Mr. Lloyd George at later dates in
connection with various war problems, nor yet the admiration for the
grit and courage displayed by him during the last three years of the
great contest which is felt by us all, could wholly remove that nasty
taste.

Much misapprehension--a misapprehension fostered by reckless and
ignorant assertions made on the subject in Parliament and in the
Press--exists in regard to the state of preparedness of our army for
war in the matt